Into the Ether
by duj
Summary: WIP, SSHG, DH-compatible. "Dear Hermione..." Twenty years after the Battle of Hogwarts, she thought she'd received all the letters there were, and despaired. But there was still one letter to come...
1. Into the Ether

INTO THE ETHER

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.**

**Thanks to my previewers, Bellegeste and Cecelle. This is not a new story; it leapt into my head half-dreamt a few months ago and I thought I'd better post the first chapter before Document Manager eliminated it as a stale link. (I've since discovered that it doesn't eliminate stale links, but if you don't delete them yourself it may prevent you uploading into Document Manager. .)**

Dear Hermione,

You must be surprised (and perhaps horrified) to be receiving a letter from your first-year Potions master twenty years after the event. If you have not Incendioed it on sight, I imagine you must be wondering why. Why do I take the trouble to time-spell a letter? Why you? And why do I write Hermione to the adult, when I have always called the child "Miss Granger"?

The last is the easiest to answer. Your surname may change, perhaps more than once, in the intervening years, but you will always be Hermione. A mouthful of a name for a scrap of a girl like you (the child you, all hair and teeth and wildly waving hand) but perhaps you've grown into it since. I trust you will excuse the informality therefore. It seemed less discourteous to call you by your given name than by a wrong one.

The time-spelling was Dumbledore's idea. He thought that writing a letter into the ether might assist in easing the turmoil of a troubled mind. A letter to no one need not be filtered or arranged. One does not need to check and re-check to make sure one has not given oneself away, in any sense of the words. It can be written in a steady stream-of-consciousness flow of one's thoughts until the torrent ceases. One can speak freely, as one never could to a less unresponsive ear.

I could not bring myself to waste my time - so valuable because now so short - on something that would never be read, so he advised me to choose someone, anyone, and time-spell the letters to their future self. Twenty years seems far enough into the future for me to write as I please, without consequence to the task before me – before us. Even if the war continues into that time, I am convinced that my part, at least, must be over. Just to be on the safe side, however, this letter has been spelled to arrive only if I no longer exist in your time.

Why you? I hardly know myself. Dumbledore suggested that perhaps I see myself in you. I scoffed, of course. He is right oftener than I care to admit, but not in this case, I believe. True we share superficial similarities: both of Muggle heritage (Do you know yet, twenty years hence as you read this, that I am half-blood and not the Pureblood your child-self probably supposes me?); both entering school with a superior knowledge of spells or hexes (though you reserve their application for the protection of your friends); both eager to learn. Yet there is little of your reputed fierce intelligence in your schoolwork nor any creativity in the regurgitated slabs of text you serve up as homework. Still, you did solve my puzzle. Perhaps I may be underestimating you.

But it is the adult you, not the rather unprepossessing child, whom I address. What are you like now, I wonder? Have you still the soft heart that leads you in the now to protect that lump of a Longbottom boy, who shares with Potter the distinction that their presence reminds me constantly of the blame I bear for their parents' fate? Do I perhaps hope to wake your kindness by thus addressing you? Am I so optimistic yet that I imagine that explaining myself might win at least understanding, if not forgiveness? Fool if I am, for you cannot remember me with fondness. I have no softness in me. It was beaten out of me as a boy, and even my best deeds are performed with harshness and rigour.

Perhaps it is your friendship with Potter that prompts me; a chance to confess through the backdoor the injuries that I shall never admit directly to him, as hateful as he is in my estimation and, no doubt, always will be. I shall, if necessary, protect him with my dying breath – which, judging by his reckless, ridiculous love of trouble, is like to be not long postponed – but feel anything other than deepest antipathy for the brat, I cannot and will not. If he had never been born, would she still be alive?

I awaited his arrival this year with as much anticipation as foreboding. Would there be more of his mother or his father in him? From the moment I caught his eye at the Sorting Feast, to find him staring at me with all his father's dislike, I knew to expect the latter, but by the time of the first lesson, I'd determined to give him another chance, for her dear sake. Lily was an excellent Potions-maker, as I knew from partnering her in Potions class. Though he scorned my introductory remarks, I gave him the opportunity to show whether his inattention came from his mother's superior advancement (though she was more considerate than to show open disrespect to a teacher) or his father's arrogance. My heart sickened at the immediate proof that he had inherited nothing of Lily but her green eyes. The prospect of seven years of viewing that anathema of a face in my classroom was more than distasteful. It almost reconciles me to having my time in the position cut short – as I have very good reason to believe it will be.

It is a week since the three of you braved the protections on the Stone, a week since Potter faced the Dark Lord before the Mirror of Erised and lived to tell the tale; your most foolish exploit yet. Worse than cornering a troll in the bathroom, worse than setting fire to a no doubt hated teacher or parading around the grounds at midnight with a baby dragon in your arms. In the grounds at midnight! What if it had been a full moon, you foolish child, and a werewolf roaming? There was one such in my schooldays. Trust me, watching a were transform as he bounds towards you, sharp-toothed, sharp-clawed and with mouth slavering, is an experience one does not wish ever to repeat.

Trust me? Hah! Why would you? Although Dumbledore tells me that you now know I was fighting the hex, not casting it, on Potter's broomstick that day, who knows what I shall have been forced to do by the exigencies of war by the time you read this? (If you do indeed read this far, which I imagine is most unlikely. Surely I can have done nothing to endear myself to a Muggle-born child in a classroom filled with the children of Death Eaters.) If I judge by my responsibilities in the first war, I shall come out of the shadows only if it's necessary to commit an atrocity in a blaze of light. Nothing is more important than keeping your foolish friend alive to defeat the Dark Lord again, forever this time, as only he can; nothing, not life, not limb, nor what little honour I yet retain.

As I said, it has been a week. One week since it was confirmed that it was the Dark Lord killing unicorns and attempting to steal the Stone – the Dark Lord under Quirrell's turban. There was a wrongness in him, I sensed it all year, but I never suspected the full truth. I thought him an agent of the Dark Lord, not the tyrant himself. If Dumbledore guessed at more, he did not tell me when we discussed it, trusting, I imagine, that my uneasiness sufficed to ensure my discretion. I can only thank twenty years of habit, born of the evasion necessary to espionage, that I said nothing solid enough to clarify my true loyalties. At least, I hope I did not.

One week since your friends landed themselves in the hospital wing with your connivance. One week of sleepless nights spent running over every word I ever addressed to Quirrell, especially this year, seeking reassurance that I have not forfeited my life and my future usefulness by a careless admission. For His presence this year suggests that He will return sooner rather than later, and when He does, I shall have to face him with the lies in my mouth and the wall behind my eyes. And I am afraid.

S


	2. Specious Argument

SPECIOUS ARGUMENT

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: Spoilers to OotP, not HBP-compatible. Thanks to all my reviewers and my previewer, Bellegeste. (Cecelle, enjoy your holiday.)**

Dear Hermione,

I've just come from the infirmary, where the child you lies covered in cat fur. Foolish, arrogant, meddlesome child! Did I not say that Polyjuice was a dangerous restricted potion?

You are – were, I suppose – I really must start differentiating the future you of my letters from the chatterbox child you who's always trying to take over my class. You were, then, well served for your folly. You got off very lightly indeed, with not even a detention or loss of a single house point, on the specious argument that your probable guilt was discovered outside of term, when punishments are customarily not given. Never mind that the crime must have occurred during term.

"Besides," Minerva said, and Dumbledore agreed, "five weeks as a cat is punishment enough."

Gryffindors! They prate of justice and fairness, but in practice they coddle their favourites like hens with one chick.

It wasn't very difficult to get the truth out of you once I explained that treatment depended on finding the cause of your condition and silence meant staying half-cat forever. You refused to implicate your co-conspirators, of course, but I imagine it can be no coincidence that two of my Slytherins were locked into a cupboard in the Entrance Hall with their shoes outside. That was the work of your two accomplices, no doubt.

Did you think you were fooling me? I know when I'm being lied to. I saw the fire of martyrdom in your eyes as you braved unknown punishments on their behalf and the guilty alarm when I taxed you with this clumsy attempt to identify the heir. Did you think me as dunderheaded as your housemates?

Tracing it back, I realised that what I had thought at the time merely a malicious prank must have been cover for breaking into my stores. You three should be expelled, not only for the theft, but for perpetrating a most dangerous sabotage. Did you never stop to think that necks may break if heads grow too heavy, that breathing, once stopped by tongue or tonsils enlarging, cannot always be restarted? That a firework landing in a fire can blow off a hand or burn out an eye?

You cried when I pointed that out, but have you learned your lesson? Or will it be you I see one day with overgrown head or hair or teeth – more than they are already, that is – you in shock, as your classmates smirk as Potter smirked? (I saw him.) Expect no sympathy from me if that day ever comes. You deserve none.

And yet...

Rash and overconfident in your abilities I know you to be – the child you, that is, though I imagine you may be still – but would a thirteen-year-old spend a month brewing Polyjuice for a lesser cause than fear of the unknown stalker that had, when you started the potion, already Petrified the Creevey boy and Filch's cat, and that has since Petrified a classmate and your House's ghost? (I imagine you must have liked him, to choose his Deathday Party over the Hallowe'en Feast and go up hungry to bed.)

You have reason to be afraid. You might not know this – either incarnation, the child you or the adult – but the last time the Chamber was opened, a student died. So the older teachers whisper among themselves, although they remember little about her, not even whether she was, in truth, a Muggle-born, as the heir's warnings seem to suggest. But whether she was or no, I cannot deny that you have especial reason to fear becoming the target.

I don't imagine it occurred to you to think that some of your teachers might have as much reason to fear. I hope you did not. Those are our concerns, not yours, nor should it be otherwise. Foolish children – to think it was your business to solve all the world's problems, without reference to the adults whose duty and care it was to relieve you of such concerns. Foolish, to think you could.

You have no idea how much harder your folly makes it to protect you, how much extra work you give me – us. I hope at the least that I have succeeded and that this letter finds you well and wiser than the yellow-eyed cat-girl lying in an infirmary bed, no doubt plotting further mischief for the first moment you escape it. I hope so, otherwise where is my reader?

Dumbledore knows more than he shares, as usual. If he has one fault more glaring than any other it is his preference for keeping information to himself. He was teaching here already then, but when I question him, he just shakes his head and says that the wrong person was blamed, but he had no proof.

I've heard a whisper accusing Hagrid, but that I could never believe. He might indeed raise a monster, thinking it harmless, and thus come to grief – it wouldn't be the first time or the last, I imagine, as you have reason to know from last year – but he would never keep silence once the monster's danger was revealed to him. If he knew anything relevant, he would say it now.

Besides, I already know who bears the title 'heir of Slytherin': none other than the Dark Lord himself. He it must have been who opened the Chamber last time, he who framed Hagrid for his crime. (I imagine it was not difficult. I have never known Hagrid not to be raising some fierce creature of one kind or another in all the years I've known him.) But how he could have infiltrated the school once more, with no turban to hide underneath; that is the question. My Slytherins know nothing and their parents have given me no hint.

If only you could speak to me across the years. Surely you must know, twenty years hence – if you've survived the intervening years, as I devoutly hope – the identity of his host or dupe and the way to end this threat. I dread discovering one of you children lying pale and stiff and cold, Petrified or worse, as I make my rounds. Another half a year to go before the school closes for the summer; I hope we've ended the danger by then, and without losing any of you. No, before you ask, not even the Weasley twins or Potter, as irritating as they are in their different ways.

Take care of yourself, when I'm not there to take care for you. Follow the rules, stay away from deserted corridors and don't go anywhere alone.

S

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

Dear Hermione,

Of course it would be you to become one of the next victims. Again I've just returned from the infirmary, but this time you could not answer my questions. What I wouldn't give to know what you saw in those final moments yesterday, to fathom this mystery and eject the infiltrator who threatens our charges. There is so little of the year left. Could you not have stayed safely in your tower until it was time to leave? Did you think we escorted you from one class to the next for no reason?

I have advised Poppy to close the infirmary to visitors, just in case. We cannot know if the Dark Lord's agent might return and try to finish you off, especially with Dumbledore gone. That fool Fudge took Hagrid away as well, and I don't know how I have contained myself without hexing again that absolute idiot Lockhart, for insisting the danger is past. If I could have the Duelling Club all over again, I should be strongly tempted to use a much stronger attack than Expelliarmus, but perhaps it's just as well; you could go farther and fare worse for a general all-purpose protective spell. If I have taught you nothing of Defence Against Dark Arts but this, may it be enough.

Rest securely, child – the you of my present. It will not be long, I promise. Pomona believes the Mandrakes will be ready for harvesting in two, maybe three, weeks, and we shall revive you all in time to send you safe home after the exams. (Don't panic that you had no time to study, silly girl; no one but you could imagine that you need it.)

S

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

Dear Hermione,

I should have guessed Lucius was the part-author of this disastrous year's events, but it seems he will bitterly rue meddling in his master's plans, whenever that master's return shall be. Perhaps he thought it would be never; he must certainly hope that now.

I know now how he introduced the Dark Lord into the school. Dumbledore assures me that Potter knows too, so I assume I have no need to explain it to you. I wonder if that was my real reason for choosing you, randomly as I thought, that your closeness to the brat who is at the centre of everything would likely render explanations unnecessary?

A diary-Horcrux, created when the Dark Lord was sixteen – by now, I imagine you know of this, if you have remained one of Potter's closest friends through the course of the coming war – and yet, perhaps, only one of several. So, at least, Dumbledore seems to think, if I have interpreted his cryptic comments correctly. It would be strange for one so afraid of dying to store his only surety of survival in a weapon, which, by its very nature, could not be used without risking its destruction; therefore it was probably not an "only". No wonder the Dark Lord looked so little human in the first war, if he had already so little soul remaining.

This may have weakened, but could not have defeated, him. Twice in two years he has almost succeeded and, however much reason urges hope, I feel a coldness in my chest that argues otherwise. It will be soon; I'm sure of it.

S

**A/N To be perfectly accurate, we don't know if Polyjuice is actually "restricted", although it would make sense for a potion with predominantly criminal uses to be so classified and the recipe was in the Restricted Section of the library.**


	3. Small Consolation

SMALL CONSOLATION

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: Spoilers to OotP, not HBP-compatible. Thanks to all my reviewers and my previewer, Bellegeste.**

Granger or Weasley or whatever your name is now,

I must have been mad to follow Dumbledore's advice about writing to a future stranger, and doubly mad to imagine that you would be a suitable candidate. I know better now. You are almost the last person I would choose, if I had my choosing again; I would rather write to the Longbottom boy than to you.

What possessed me to listen? Too much Phoenix song? Or did I perhaps dimly foresee that your friendship with Potter would be bound to put us in opposition and there would no doubt be many times when the small satisfaction of denouncing your behaviour to your future self would be the only compensation for enforced silence over your present misdemeanours?

But this was more than a misdemeanour. Whatever possessed you? With the school-grounds crawling with Dementors and on a full moon night – after I had alerted you in class to the risk of meeting a werewolf – the three of you sneaked out of the castle to explore what used to be a werewolf's den. What were you thinking? Meddlesome, irresponsible children, do you ever think at all?

I warned Dumbledore how it would be. I reminded him that you three are almost as bad as the Weasley twins for breaking curfew and wandering the grounds; if anyone was in danger from the return of the werewolf it was you. He only twinkled and said that he trusted Lupin. Hah! If he knew him as I do, he wouldn't need the events of this night to see him for the broken reed he is. A liar and traitor; you heard him admit it yourself.

But what did you _do_ after he recounted how he had betrayed you – all of you, and your friend Potter most of all – by withholding information for the full course of the school year, information that would have kept the convict out of the castle, unable to menace the Weasley boy in his bed or try to kill your other friend as he killed his parents?

What did you _do_ after he admitted having violated Dumbledore's trust as a student and having continued as an adult, for no better reason than to protect his undeserved good name? (Or for no reason at all. He would have risked nothing by describing the secret tunnels Black undoubtedly used to enter the school. Could the headmaster who winks at Potter's night-time wanderings possibly condemn the similar wanderings of his father's friends?)

Where was your head, Granger? How could you believe that weak-willed smiler over me, who has watched over the three of you since you were eleven and saved your friend's ungrateful skin at cost to my health and reputation? How could you?

Was I not at school with them? Have I not known them long enough and suffered enough at their hands to understand what they would be at, better than you, you foolish, arrogant girl?

I can only assume that one of them must have Confunded you. How else could you hear the werewolf talk of Black luring me to his den to be eaten and still suggest a few minutes later that "it wouldn't hurt to hear what they've got to say"? They almost killed me the last time I tried to hear what they had to say, you stupid girl, and you thought it wouldn't _hurt_?

"If there was a mistake," you said. A mistake? Didn't you listen? At sixteen, Black tricked me into confronting a fully-grown werewolf on a full moon night with nowhere to run but a narrow, winding tunnel. Neither of them denied it. Black even boasted of it. He tricked me – and I was not an unsuspicious youth. I had, moreover, the daily evidence of his malice pounded into my body and imprinted in my soul, and yet still I trusted the tale he wove.

(Although that you could not know, not from the falsehoods the werewolf fed you. Jealous of James Potter, that arrogant, bigheaded lout? I have more creativity, more intelligence, more courage in the tip of one finger than he had in his whole self-righteous body. He was a coward, Granger, a coward, who wouldn't even face me without three friends to guard his back!)

You solved my logic puzzle as a first year and yet Black's boast of attempted murder did not clue you in to his character? Wasn't it clear that his only regret was that he did not succeed? He tried to murder me at sixteen! He did murder the Potters a few years later and his friend Pettigrew and a dozen Muggles, besides! And you trusted him? You claim not to have been Confunded, but how could you not have been?

I don't understand. I don't understand why Dumbledore seems to believe his lies, believe him innocent, that murderer who compassed Lily's death after I tried so hard to save her. I don't understand why he connived at rescuing the Dark Lord's favourite, whose testimony when his master returns may be my doom. I don't understand why he sent you out with your Time-Turner, two injured children, to save a villain.

Yes, your Time-Turner, you silly child! Did you think I didn't know you had one; that any of your teachers didn't know? (If you'd ever heard Minerva boasting of your diligence in the staffroom, you'd know none of us could remain ignorant of that fact.) Didn't you hear Dumbledore hint me away from questioning Black's escape; didn't you watch him tell me what you'd done in unmistakably simple words?

"Unless you're suggesting the children are able to be in two places at once", he said, for all the world as if you hadn't done that every weekday since the start of the year or sat three exams simultaneously! Of course that idiot Fudge was too stupid to catch his meaning, but did you think me similarly afflicted?

Why did he do it? Why?

"My memory is as good as it ever was." What did he mean by that, I wonder. I suppose he will come down to the dungeons to tell me after he's gotten rid of Fudge and his Dementors, once he's seen them all safely off the premises. And I'll nod and listen and swallow down my rage, because Dumbledore always knows what he's about and he must have a reason for this.

But even he can be wrong. Until now, I've kept his werewolf's secret for him, exactly as I promised all those years ago. All year, I've bitten my tongue and accepted his reassurances that the werewolf is safe to house in a school, that he is responsible enough to allow near children. That promise is ended now. It should never have been made.

Had Lupin been the caring, careful person Dumbledore believed him to be, it would have been unfair to tell his secret and expose him to the contempt of the world, but he is as fully deserving of that contempt as I ever thought him and as dangerous.

Do not tell me he didn't transform and almost eat you (me?) before I regained consciousness; I am not so stupid as to believe it. The signs of a scuffle, the paw-marks and drag-marks of a wolf's tail on the ground told their own story, even had he not been gone and the moon high in the sky and the other four of you lying unconscious round about when I came to.

Don't try to excuse him. Did he not stand there telling you of his transformations while the moon rode high in the sky, any of its stray beams ready to turn him instantly into a slavering, carnivorous monster? Did I not remind him of the danger, over and over again: "You forgot to take your potion tonight … werewolf …werewolf …_werewolf_"? Yet still he manifestly took no precautions, with three children – students – at risk every second of the time he dallied.

Even Dumbledore cannot keep him on after this, after his betrayal and his dereliction of duty, after his lies of omission and commission (he told me Potter's Map was a joke-product of Zonko's, though he knew better), after his final irresponsible failure to take his potion or at least to send you away before he Turned. He will have to fire him now and that's as it should be, but I have a responsibility to more than Dumbledore. Lupin is a danger to all around him, and all who might employ or house or trust him in the future have the right to know of the danger.

I won't forget what you've done tonight. I won't forget your wands raised against me as I tried to save your lives, and I won't forget waking up, surely over an hour later, outside, hanging Mobilicorpused in the air, my head throbbing. How many times did you or he or they hit me when I was down, that I feel so many separate bruises and bumps on my skull? How long did you leave me unconscious, without a Rennervate or any attempt at healing? Did any of you care whether I lived or died?

I know the answer. Don't think I will soon forget it, child, adult, whoever you are! I will never forget it.

S

**A/N As, a few hours earlier, Snape had overheard Lupin admit to serial irresponsibility and negligent disregard for the safety of others, and as this was the second time that Lupin had come close to killing or biting him, it's understandable that Snape felt that Lupin had forfeited his right to privacy. The first occasion was not directly Lupin's fault, but a history of "near misses, many of them" and "breaking the rules ... set down for my own and others' safety" (PoA, ch 18) couldn't help but inspire mistrust.**

**Canon doesn't specify exactly where Lupin transformed, what the ground was like or whether signs of a scuffle were visible. I chose to assume they were. **


	4. Sad Parade

SAD PARADE

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: This fic is not intended to be DH-compatible, but contains DH spoilers. I still plan to go with my original ending, since it was the inspiration for the fic, but I may possibly write an alternate DH-compatible ending as well. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Cecelle. **

Hermione,

He's back. The Dark Lord is back and I am alive.

It was a near-run thing though. I was late. He was furious. And Dumbledore hadn't thought to warn me that he'd declared his intention of killing me. "One who I believe has left forever … He will be killed, of course …" So the Potter boy had reported, apparently, but I didn't hear any of it until this morning after I reported back. Dumbledore must be very confident in my powers of persuasion. (Or careless of my safety. But that I cannot believe.) My bones ache.

Why am I writing to you? I swore last year that I would never write to you again, but there is no one else. Dumbledore is the only one in this time I may speak to and I refuse to burden him with my weak fears, lest he see me still as the snivelling boy that met him on a bleak hillside, fifteen and a half years ago. He despised me then – rightly I'm sure, for I had betrayed my best friend. I sometimes think I have earned a little respect in the years since and I will not risk losing it. I can conquer this. I must.

Young Diggory is dead. I could not have saved him, even had I been there.

I am not sure that I forgive you. When the headmaster explained that Black had shifted his promised guardianship to Pettigrew, I understood how he might have cozened you into believing him. He was always a persuasive liar.

Dumbledore may trust him, but I never will. Could Black have been fool enough to trust his friends' lives to Petty-Pete, the foulest little maggot that ever crawled a decaying corpse? That grovelling little toady, whose Animagus form was a rat, I'm told. A rat! And yet, Black suspected nothing? No, I suspect collusion. It was Black's idea, Dumbledore says. I can well believe that. And then he persuaded his fool friend to the stupidest course of action imaginable.

(No, I am not like Black or Pettigrew; I didn't _know_ her life was forfeit on my words.)

I suppose it was he that knocked me around that night, but did you raise a voice in protest? As I have seen no sign of contrition in you until last night, any more than I have seen it in your friends, I imagine not. It is hard for most children to argue with adults, I told myself, but you are not most children.

My anger was rekindled when you returned to Hogwarts after the summer, all aflame for the poor, suffering house elves. You thought it not right that they should slave for no reward and no gratitude. And I? Do I not slave constantly to keep your friend (and you) alive, and how am I repaid? With my robes set on fire, my stores rifled, my help scorned and my wand taken! (I have deep bruises behind my ear and further back on my head. This time, you are not to blame.)

I watched you approach other teachers, seeking followers for your silly Society, and I prepared my words if you dared come to me. You did not. I knew you would not, but I indulged myself with dreaming nonetheless. Anything was a welcome distraction from my Mark ever-blackening and the grim anticipation of last night, a night I hoped would never come and knew would come soon.

I did not even begin to cool towards you until the Yule Ball. Seeing you swanning around with Krum, with your smoothed hair, your proud eyes and your small-toothed nervous smile, like a little girl dressing up in her mother's jewellery, reminded me how very young you still were. (Diggory was with Chang that night. The eight of you walked into the Hall in procession. He was a fine lad; the pride of all Hufflepuff and with good reason.) I heard in the staffroom that your night ended in tears. I can't say I was surprised. But perhaps I was appeased, a very little.

But you were just a passing thought. I had my own reasons for dismay. Igor (Karkaroff to you) had been dogging me all year and that night I could not avoid him and was forced to endure his terrified gabbling. He has betrayed too many fellow Death Eaters to risk facing our master.

You saw my Mark last night, so I know you need no explanations. I thought I saw, for once, a glimmer of understanding, a hint of concern in your eyes, as I left. Did you understand where I was going? Did you care whether I returned?

Cruciatus only seems endless. The pain goes and the body barely remembers, but for the injuries self-inflicted under its influence.

"If you are ready ... if you are prepared …" Dumbledore asked me. How could I be otherwise? Have we not waited together for this very eventuality, ever since the Dark Lord's fall? Had I not told him months earlier, on that night of the Ball, that I would stand fast?

I had told him Igor would flee, when the time came, and he had somehow felt the need to ask if I was tempted to flee too. (Did he not know that I would not? Have I not proven myself yet? But he has never understood that Gryffindors have no monopoly on courage. The Gryffindors of my year – all but Lily – were a sorry lot of cowards, brave only in a bunch. Have you realised that by your time, twenty-one years after Lupin betrayed us all, or do you still cherish him as a mentor?)

But I ramble. It has been an endless day and an even longer night. First the disaster of the third Triwizard Task: the disappearance of the two Hogwarts champions and the burning of my Mark as the Dark Lord reborn called us all to him. Igor running, as anticipated, and the boys' reappearance a little later, with Potter clutching Diggory's corpse. (At least I did not have to watch him die.) Then, finally, the impostor's unmasking, as he whisked away the Potter boy to kill him.

(When I first suspected him, it seemed incredible: Moody, the fearsome Auror who put so many of my old companions in Azkaban; Moody, Dumbledore's friend. I hesitated to tell the headmaster my thoughts, remembering how he had received my suspicions about Lupin last year. But someone had been stealing Polyjuice ingredients from my stores and, if it was not you or Potter, it had to be someone else. Then, after Crouch disappeared, Dumbledore warned me that he believed we might have a hostage situation, with the true Moody's life at stake. He was right, but we never suspected the impostor could be Barty. We believed him dead.) A life for a life; we saved Moody and lost Diggory, and the Dark Lord rose again.

My hair was sticky with dirt this morning. And my fingernails. I set the water as hot as I could bear.

Fools that we were to let him slip past us yesterday with the Portkey! Fools not to have warned the other teachers to beware, but we could not risk him finding out we suspected him. (Another death I could not prevent. Stupid, stupid! I told Dumbledore not to agree to the Tournament. He said he had no choice.) But we were not the only fools. Potter saw Barty in his father's cursed map, breaking into my office the night I almost caught him on the stairs, and not only said nothing, but lent the map to the very person who was trying to kill him. And who, due to that folly, almost succeeded last night.

(Why was it in his possession, anyway? Lupin must have given it back to him at the end of third year. I'm surer than ever that I was right to out him, for someone more irresponsible I've rarely seen. He is a danger to all that know him.)

And even then the night was barely started. Fudge and his Dementor; his argument with Dumbledore; the unpleasant revelation that Black was at Hogwarts, hidden in his dog-form; and, after all that, the meeting I have just barely survived, which is the reason I picked up my quill to write to you (and the inevitable debriefing. Let us not forget that.) Yet every time I approach anywhere near the subject, my thoughts skitter away.

He's back. I've faced him and I am alive. That is the first hurdle. The first of many.

How I hate lying. To look into those red eyes and hear those thin lips sully her name while I smirk and say that she meant nothing to me, that she was just a pretty face and figure that I desired in my foolish youth, but I've found others fair since then, women of purer blood.

What did I care for her blood? The folly was in thinking that blood mattered at all, that it was any test of power or purity or right. I know better now.

And yet, I counterfeit well enough to fool him. How I do not know, when rage rises blindly within me, tearing at my Occlumentic defences, bidding me strike. But I must. And since I must, I can.

He knew I had asked Dumbledore's help to save her. (How, I asked, when I could speak again? He merely smirked down at me and said it had sufficed to make Dumbledore trust me.) That's why he'd kept the secret of his spy's identity from me, suspecting I would betray him for her sake. As I did, of course. (But he had planned, if she hadn't refused, to buy me back with her life, according to his promise. And then to hold me hostage to it; I see that now.) He saw me, in your first year, Dumbledore's colleague and loyal lieutenant, and he was convinced my allegiance was changed indeed. As it was. Why else would I refuse the call, he reasoned, why else remain by Dumbledore's side when my master beckoned? He knew the truth then – and yet, I have convinced him otherwise.

My finest hour. Whatever part I act from now on can never be so finely balanced on a knife's point as this last night's deception. I should feel relief, but I drown in weariness. How much longer must I endure, how much longer this sad parade of effort? Will it never be enough?

No, never.

S

**A/N 'Tempted to flee...' is from DH, ch 33.**

**"If you are ready… if you are prepared ..." is from GoF, ch 36.**

**In GoF, ch 33, Voldemort speaks of "One, too cowardly to return ... he will pay. One who I believe has left me forever ... he will be killed, of course ... and one, who remains my most faithful servant, and who has already re-entered my service." **

**I figure Karkaroff for the coward and Barty for the faithful servant, which leaves Snape as the one believed to have left forever. Of course, Voldemort might figure Snape for the coward and Karkaroff for the one who left, since presumably he knows that both betrayed him, but not if he understands their characters at all.**

**I suggest that Voldemort understood from Snape's request to spare Lily that he would try to receive promises of safety from both sides and would thus be able to meet and entreat Dumbledore with perfect sincerity (thus gaining his trust), but his loyalty would ultimately go to whoever saved (and subsequently held) Lily. OTOH, if he killed her anyway, Dumbledore, as much as himself, would have broken the promise of safety (and Snape might even blame Dumbledore more, on the grounds of having trusted him more), so Snape's loyalties would go to the one whose ethos was a closer match or who promised more, ie himself.**

**Upon his return to Voldemort, Snape agreed that this was the case and pretended both that his apparent loyalty to Dumbledore had been self-interested pretence and that he had outgrown the emotional weakness that had divided his loyalties in VW1.**


	5. More Progress Than None

MORE PROGRESS THAN NONE

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: This fic is not intended to be DH-compatible, but may contain DH spoilers. (I may possibly write an alternate DH-compatible ending after posting the original non-DH ending.) Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to Lady Memory for finding time in this busy season to preview. **

**The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape has been easing his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters to a twenty-years-on Hermione. It's now fifth year... **

Hermione,

Is it not bad enough to be caught between the Dark Lord, the Order and the Ministry without meeting your earnest, reproachful eyes at every turn? Cease and desist, you silly girl. I said nothing to your idiotic friend last week but what he very well deserved and needed to hear. If he cannot concentrate well enough to follow the steps written on the board in front of him, how will he cope when he has to keep multiple outcomes straight in his head? He is the only one who can vanquish the Dark Lord; his life will only get harder from now on. And stop vetting his homework. He needs to stand on his own two feet, with your friendship merely an extra aid, instead of a crutch.

The proof of my point is that his work today was almost acceptable, although his written homework, barring your input, still leaves much to be desired. I shall continue therefore to teach him as I see fit. Try if you can, instead, to convince him to stop uselessly butting heads with someone whose secondary purpose in coming here is finding an excuse to expel him.

Her primary purpose seems to be preventing an imaginary rebellion against Fudge by denying the students practical Defence lessons. The fools! If Dumbledore had wanted to be Minister, he could have accepted the position any of the multiple times it was offered him.

I find myself wishing I could have tested Longbottom's Shrinking Solution on her instead of on his toad. She might be slightly less unbearable shrunk down to her proper size. "Hogwarts High Inquisitor"? "Powers to inspect her fellow-educators"? However "eccentric" Dumbledore's appointments may have been in the last few years – and honesty compels the admission that they have been eccentric in the extreme – they pale before Fudge's determination to discredit our greatest bulwark against the Dark Lord. Should Albus Dumbledore ever fall indeed, the Ministry's fall would not be long-delayed.

Minerva tells me you recognised a small part of this, the bit about Ministry interference in Hogwarts, and even explained it well enough for your dunderheaded friends to understand, which shows at least the beginnings of independent thought. I cannot say I've seen any sign of it in your schoolwork, however. Beware of hubris! The story of how you challenged the toad in your first class with her has reached the staffroom and caused much guarded mirth behind her back, but was it worth the risk? Choose your battles carefully.

It's a pity I can't send this to the child you where it might do some good, instead of to your adult incarnation twenty years too late. However, it is a satisfaction to be able to say it to one of you, at least.

S

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

Dear Hermione,

A public meeting in the Hog's Head, that haven of thieves and informers? What were you thinking? If you imagine that Dumbledore's brother being the proprietor is any recommendation, I urge you to think again. Yes, he is nominally a member of the Order – but so is Mundungus Fletcher, and your friend Potter's late run-in with Dementors while supposedly under Fletcher's supervision should be enough to disabuse you of that folly.

Still, I suppose you have begun to exhibit some initiative, even if your attention to discretion leaves somewhat to be desired. Learn from this setback to look further than your own aims to the wider consequences of each action. Her eye is even more firmly fixed on the three of you than before. Be very careful.

...

Have I not told you many times to stop assisting your dunderheaded friends in class? Potter would learn more from paying attention to his brewing than from attempting to eavesdrop on my conversations with Madam Toad, or, for that matter, with anyone. If he refuses to focus in class, he must make up the deficiency out of class in written work. So stop looking at me like that, you aggravating girl. He leans on you far too heavily and will be completely lost without you when the time comes to leave this place and face his adversary. No doubt you imagine that you will always be together and I suppose you intend to do your utmost to ensure that, but you can't guarantee not to be separated and then where will he be? How will he survive?

S

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

Hermione,

Can't you talk some sense into your friend's thick head? He is in the very gravest danger and all he can think about is Quidditch and beating Draco's brains out? What does it take to get through to him? Minerva is at her wit's end.

I wish I could hope for Hagrid to talk some sense into him, but goodhearted as he is, sensible Hagrid is not. (Nor any fonder of Malfoys than Potter is.) He hasn't been back a day and already he's managed to clash with Madam Inquisitor, if her mutterings in the staffroom tonight are any guide. (Surely even Hagrid cannot have hoped to excuse his absence with stories of "sensitive skin" and "fresh mountain air".) It will have to be you, therefore. Use the brains you currently waste on propping up your friends' laziness and persuade Potter to pull his head in.

(You're laughing at me, of course. If only the jest is not too bitter for laughter. How foolish to expend my energies sending a warning that must, of its very nature, arrive twenty years too late. Laugh, then. Laugh for all of us. If in your future time there is reason and freedom for laughing, our sacrifices now will not have been in vain.)

S

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

Hermione,

I despair of that boy. You have not half his natural talent at mind-magic, but I'm convinced you must have made more progress (which is to say, more progress than none) in half the time I've wasted trying to din the principles of Occlumency into his stubborn wooden head. If anything, he has got worse.

Mysterious Ministry corridors and locked doors, Azkaban escapes, suspicious deaths and injuries to Order members ... None of these are any of his concern. (I concede that his vision of Arthur Weasley was most timely. Nevertheless, we have wider concerns than the fortunes of individuals, however loved.) He has (or should have) but one objective this year, to keep himself inaccessible to the Dark Lord, and that boils down to two tasks that no one can do for him, to keep his head down and his mind closed. Is it too much to ask that he attempt at least one of them?

S

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

Dear Hermione,

Yes, yes, very amusing, no doubt. I admit that even I have cracked a smile (secretly) at the sight of the toad in full cry after copies of the latest Quibbler. How you children must be hugging yourself. And, yes, I can see that there were some strategic advantages in combating the Ministry's determined obfuscation of the evidence.

(Disadvantages, too; while the Ministry has closed its eyes to the Dark Lord's return, He has found it expedient to refrain from open war. When this period of deceptive quiet ends, as end it will, far too soon, the massacres will begin. Surely your adult self can see – has seen, I imagine – that delaying the war until Potter's majority is (was) by far the preferable option. But in my experience, this is beyond the reasoning of a child.)

The Weasley twins must be jealous. And Peeves. All their mischief put together pales into insignificance compared to what you children surely see as glorious mayhem. I could almost wish (what I can never allow myself to wish, for well I know it can never happen) to bend time and speak to you – the adult you – in person to ask who thought of it. Something in your smug expression suggests the hardly believable thought that it was you.

Guard your face, child. Guard it as securely as Potter needs to guard his mind. (No progress there, I'm afraid.) Dumbledore and Potter are the Ministry's primary targets, but they would not disdain the secondary target of separating Potter from his support base, from you and young Weasley, and Madam Toad would be delighted to expel you, in particular. It was not wise to mark yourself as her personal enemy in your first lesson – all in support of your friend, Potter, of course. How very Gryffindor.

S

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

Hermione,

Are you satisfied now that you've driven Dumbledore from the castle to protect you? Are you satisfied? Idiot child! Cannot you leave adult's work to the adults, and concentrate on becoming the person – the people – you will need to be? I've no patience to talk to you tonight. Foolish, foolish children?

S

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

Hermione,

If I hadn't sworn to protect that brat with my life, I might have killed him tonight.

I left to tend to a student and returned to find him in my Pensieve. Has he told you, I wonder? Has he told you why I refuse to teach him again, or fobbed you off with some lie? I suppose you know, at the least, what he saw. (If not, I shall certainly not tell you. I wish I could forget myself how I pushed away my dearest friend with one unmeant insult.)

Amidst the familiar shame of my worst memory is a new sharp sting that comes with knowing that you would have been more loyal, you would have forgiven. Those two dunderheads have repeatedly hurt you and each other, sometimes sending you to Coventry for weeks at a time, but it has never brought things to an end between you.

It doesn't change what I feel. Love is not lessened by its unreason. I didn't love Lily for her constancy or her friendship, I loved her – I love her – because she was Lily. But yet, I didn't want to know that she was in any way lesser.

It doesn't change anything. Is the sun less warm because there are bigger stars, shining alone where we can't see them? Do we long for morning any less, knowing it could be brighter did another star shine in its place? Lily was my sun. I want no other.

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

That boy will be the death of someone soon. Doesn't he see how his reckless actions wreak havoc on all his friends and supporters, how he forces them to sacrifice themselves to protect him? First Dumbledore, and now the Weasley twins gone from the school. Will he never learn?

(And you, Hermione? Why didn't you stop him? Surely a resourceful girl like you could think of _something_ to do or say to hold him back. Try harder next time.)

(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)(o)

You foolish child! Cannot you contrive to avoid almost getting yourself killed for even one year? _Not even one?_ What possessed you to waltz off to the Ministry after hearing Potter give me his message? Oh, don't tell me, you 'forgot' I was an Order member. You suspected me of being an Umbridge-supporter, all appearance to the contrary. You thought me too stupid to comprehend the warning. What, you idiotic child, _what_? I am out of all patience.

You lie now in the hospital wing. Again. I've just delivered Poppy a fresh load of potions while you pretended to be asleep. But my hearing is sharper than you realise. I heard someone whisper sorry as I left the room, and I know, as clearly as if I'd been watching, that it can have been no other but you. Sorry, indeed. You should be. You will be. The respite is over, and now the war begins.

S

**A/N This fic assumes a strong memory of canon. For those less obsessed, I provide a guide:  
The first letter, which refers mostly to the first week of lessons, was sent in the second week of school (ch 12-15);  
the second in early October (Umbridge's inspection of Snape's lesson was two days after the Hogsmeade visit of DA recruitment) (ch 16-17);  
the third in November, after Harry and the Weasley twins were banned from Quidditch for life (ch 19-20);  
the fourth in Jan/Feb, far enough into the Occlumency lessons for Snape to know Harry wasn't trying (ch 25);  
the fifth in late February after Harry's Quibbler interview appeared and was immediately banned (ch 26);  
the sixth in April, shortly before the Easter break, when the DA was discovered and Dumbledore fled (ch 27);  
the seventh two days later, after Snape caught Harry in his Pensieve (ch 28);  
the eightth after the Easter break, when the Weasley twins' decoy attempt to let Harry use Umbridge's Floo went wrong (ch 29);  
and the last shortly after the DoM fight (ch 37).**

**Since canon follows Harry almost exclusively, it's not clear what Snape knew or guessed, and when. Naturally, there would have been times when he guessed wrong, for example, his supposition in the second letter that Hermione might have known the identity of the Hog's Head's barman. **

**The post-DoM hospital wing encounter is not canon. OTOH, Harry wouldn't know if it had happened, as he was the only one of the Ministry six who didn't need any medical treatment that night.**


	6. Forget Prudence

FORGET PRUDENCE

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: This fic will not be fully DH-compatible because the story emerged from its original planned ending, which I don't plan to change. However, it is full of DH-spoilers, and I suspect I'll eventually add an alternative DH-compatible ending. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Cecelle and Lady Memory. **

**There's a bit of mild swearing in this chapter.**

**The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape has been easing his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters twenty years into the future to Hermione. It is now sixth year… **

He's asked me to kill him, Hermione. With that infernal twinkle in his eye, as if he was offering me a second slice of treacle tart. He wants _me. _To kill _him_. By the end of the school year.

I can't do it. I won't.

To save Draco's soul the damage, he said. (Hah! If he cared for Draco's soul, he'd have tried to turn it from its path before now. Draco has known since the end of his first year that Dumbledore offered Slytherins nothing but undeserved humiliation in their moment of hard-won triumph.)

"And my soul?" I asked him. Am I nothing in his eyes?

He tried to tell me I should be doing him a kindness, sparing him "a protracted and messy" death at the hands of Greyback or Bellatrix. He tried to tell me I must do it to protect the children – to be in the best position to stand between them and the Carrows next year. He tried to tell me it didn't matter, because he was dying anyway from the cursed ring that withered his hand.

He wants _me_ to kill him.

Whatever possessed him to put it on? Surely he knew better than to touch such a thing ungloved! He was "tempted", he said. Tempted? What could the great and brilliant Dumbledore want enough to forget prudence? To throw his life away when he's so desperately needed?

He wants me to _kill_ him. I can't.

S

* * *

Hell, Hell, Hell!

I should never have listened to him. He told me to offer whatever help or guidance might win Draco's confidence, with the result that I've trapped myself into an Unbreakable Vow. I didn't dream Narcissa would ask me to do the deed myself "if it seems Draco will fail". I'm a worse dunderhead than Longbottom. Of course Draco will fail! His imagination has always been bigger than his capacity.

I don't know what to do. Rip my soul to shreds to stay alive for the children or die too soon, abandoning them. Save Dumbledore or the boy – both boys. Is there no other choice?

There is still one chance. He wanted Horace Slughorn back for reasons of his own. (Probably to enable Potter to continue a subject for which he has neither interest nor talent.) So he's offered me Defence at last, and I have accepted. Perhaps the curse may kill me before I have to kill him.

S

* * *

That boy will be the death of me! How did you contrive to ally yourself with such a reckless hotheaded idiot (or I may say, two such reckless idiots, for there's little to choose between the pair of them) – and to endure six years of their company with apparent pleasure?

He cannot turn up on time for the Sorting Feast; no, he must get himself nobbled on the train and be brought to the gates by an Auror! If Tonks hadn't been watching for him, he'd be on the way back to London by now, and every member of the Order scouring Hogsmeade in widening circles. Worse, his meddling in Draco's affairs risks cutting short Dumbledore's life too soon – before he's ready. And before you are. Use this year well, child. Time is running out.

S

* * *

Even you must admit he earned that detention, Hermione.

After only one lesson, it's clear that he intends to pay as little attention to learning Defence skills that may well save his life – or a friend's – as he did to studying Potions. Presumably, he imagines that, having coached a few other students, none of whom was ever taught by a competent Defence teacher (with the possible exception of Barty), he has nothing more to learn. If he thinks he'll be able to take down the Dark Lord with _Expelliarmus_, I assure you he very much mistakes the matter.

S

* * *

You are always on the spot, aren't you, Hermione? Whatever happens at or around or concerning this school, from Petrified cats to cursed necklaces, somehow the three of you always contrive to be there, just in the nick. And Minerva tells me that not only did you see the curse take effect yesterday, but you claim to have seen the necklace at Borgin and Burke's, months ago, while following Draco.

Stay out of his affairs, child. (Child no longer; you came of age last month, didn't you? Girl then.) It isn't safe. He has not the stomach for killing face-to-face, but he's not above killing by proxy, as this affair shows, alibi or no.

We are in a cleft stick. Should we remove Draco from Hogwarts, the Vow forces me to kill Dumbledore on the spot – with Potter nowhere near ready – but it has failed to win Draco's confidence. His aunt has taught him to blame me for his father's imprisonment, not wholly without justice, if for different reasons than she imagines, and he has so far refused to speak to me. It seems I've doomed myself to no purpose.

At least someone had the wit to get Miss Bell to the hospital wing quickly and to prevent anyone else touching the necklace. I suppose that was you? Fortunately, her exposure was slight – a tiny hole in her glove – and I was able to stop the curse from spreading. She'll have to stay at St Mungo's for several months, but I believe the damage can be reversed.

Unlike the headmaster. One expects people to die in war, but I didn't expect him to die before me. And never by my hand.

How you must hate me, Hermione-of-the-future. Do you even read my letters or do you rip them all up, cursing my name? If it were anyone else, I'd be sure of it, but you combine curiosity with reflection. If anyone might listen to a murderer's explanations, it would be you.

Am I a fool for hoping that the girl who trusted a faithless werewolf at fourteen, in the teeth of his confession, might grow up to trust Dumbledore's killer? Am I truly sending letters into the ether, never to be read?

I refuse to think that. If your benevolence exists not in reality, let it exist in my fantasy. I have not friends enough to disdain even imaginary ones. (Surely even Horace will believe me fallen after this year.) So that I am not there to see you hating me, I shall indulge myself with hoping that you forgive.

S

* * *

Another useless confrontation with Draco at Horace's party! He is determined to lock me out of his plans. He says he has other allies than Crabbe and Goyle. He may mean only his aunt and uncle, which would be bad enough, but I fear the worst.

He told me to "break" the Vow, as if that were possible except by dying. I knew his liking had waned, but hardly to that extent.

It doesn't matter. Why should he care more for me than anyone else ever has?

I don't think much of your taste, by the way. _McLaggen_? Weasley was bad enough. Minerva has often argued that at least he is a true Gryffindor – but even she will not try to defend your new fancy. He's an obnoxious, pretentious boor.

Speaking of the obnoxious, what has Potter been doing to make Horace imagine him a prodigy? He's a competent enough brewer when he bothers to try (which is unfortunately rare), but "exceptional" only at laziness, inattention, and cheek.

Are you helping him again? (Foolish girl; he won't become an Auror, as he claims to wish, by cheating.) Yet that cannot be it. You could not lift his skill to that extent, for you have it not yourself. You are proficient and steady, but not inspired. There's something very strange about this.

S

* * *

He tells me nothing. I am to kill him, he says, and become headmaster to protect the children, and that is enough to be going on with. His portrait will advise me if I need advice.

He tells me nothing, and that arrogant, talentless boy too much. How many evenings have they not spent together talking of who knows what, while I am fobbed off with reminders that it is Draco who must be my concern at the moment.

He is Potter's concern too, I see. Even during your first Apparition lesson, the boy was spying on him. You stayed where you were, I noticed. Have you quarrelled with both your friends?

Surely not over McLaggen. I haven't seen you in his company but the once. Is it Miss Brown then that has separated your little group? But that does not explain why Potter is less in your company. If anything, I'd have supposed Weasley's absorption in vulgar romance would have freed his friend to spend _more_ time with you, not less, but you seem often alone these days, alone and unhappy.

They are not worth your regret, girl. If they cannot see your loyal generous heart, forget them. If nothing else, you may live the longer.

But you must know that your friendships expose you to danger, and it has never stopped you yet. Foolish Gryffindor girl. You are too much like Lily. As she stood in front of her baby fifteen and a half years ago, so you would stand in front of him now. I fear for you.

S

* * *

He has used me. I have spied for him, lied for him, jumped at his bidding, jumped through his hoops – all for Lily's boy, all to save the very little that remained of the one joy I've ever known. And all the time he meant him to die. He was _preparing_ him to die.

I feel sick. The boy is a Horcrux: a vessel holding a splinter of the Dark Lord's soul, created accidentally when he tried to kill him. As long as he lives, the Dark Lord cannot die.

I cannot save him. There is nothing I can do, nowhere I can hide him (not that he would go), no way to destroy the Dark Lord's soul in him but to destroy him too. I cannot save him. The boy – Lily's boy – is a dead child walking.

I thought Dumbledore loved him, as much as he loves anyone. I thought I was protecting Lily's boy to survive the battles. I thought I was preparing him for a life after war. And all the time, I have been keeping him alive so that he can die at the right moment. Like a pig to the slaughter.

Oh, Lily. Why couldn't I have died when you did? Why did I have to linger, fruitlessly? And Dumbledore. How I have deceived myself about him. I understand now his use for me: not to watch the boy walk to his death but to send him there, to tell him when it is time for him to die. How you must hate me now, Hermione. How could you do other?

S

* * *

I knew it was too quiet. The Dark Lord has been pressuring Draco to speed up his plans. I expected another attack from him before now. If I hadn't taught your class about bezoars that very first day, perhaps your redheaded friend would not have survived to tell the tale, for Horace, I know well, is not a quick thinker in emergencies.

_You _would have known, of course, even without the lesson. I remember how you waved your arm in the air at my questions, how you lit up like a lighthouse at the prospect of showing your knowledge. And how you drooped when I flatly declined to let you. I little thought then you would ever be more than an aggravation to me.

And yet it was the little show-off I chose as future-confidante at the end of that year, the little know-it-all, all grown up into a woman of my own age. I still don't understand why. Did I suppose your solving of my puzzle bespoke a kinship between us, or did I see even then that there is more to you than learning?

You have forgiven Weasley, I see. I don't understand what you admire in the boy, but I shall not dispute with you on that. If you could forgive him, perhaps you can forgive me?

The cases are far different. He has sinned only in being a disloyal friend, and I … In what particulars have I not sinned? I have not killed directly until now, but there are enough indirect deaths to lay to my account, friends I betrayed and strangers I did not save. In any case, that omission is to be rectified by the end of the year, is it not?

I have lied, I have betrayed, I have hated. I hate still.

What are you like, twenty years on, I wonder? Still the same unruly hair, the same bossy tilt to your chin? Are you married to your Weasley, or to another, or have you chosen solitude? Children? Dedicated to your career? It can make no manner of difference to me, but I amuse myself when I lie awake, night after night, imagining the many possibilities of you. Or perhaps, console would be a better word. I like to think you read and sigh and understand.

I hope at least you are alive.

S

* * *

_Sectumsempra_, Hermione, he used _Sectumsempra_! Without even knowing what it was, from what I saw in his empty head, is the boy mad? To use an untried spell against an enemy! To use it against anyone!

I know now, at any rate, the source of his so-called genius in Potions. He used _my_ improvements, _my_ book, to fake competency; _mine,_ the property of the Half-Blood Prince!

I gloried in that name once. I fancied myself a dark knight, a dashing hero, one of the "cool kids" – someone that Lily might fancy. How it burns to remember that. I suppose I may call myself a dark knight, of a sort. At any rate, I have cast a shadow over all I tried to help and save, so surely I am dark enough in truth, even if my knighthood consists of little more than skulking around while others destroy dragons.

But dark is exactly what Potter _must not_ be. He must never give in to the dark splinter he carries, the Dark Lord's bit of soul. I have to make him see, before it's too late, the path he's treading. Let him copy out Filch's fading punishment records. He will see enough of darkness and its consequences in that.

Perhaps it will be best to start with my own school years. Let him see what bullying tricks his father and godfather used, the better to understand not to follow in them. He has ever been prone to worship their memory, but if he saw their misdeeds listed, severally and in detail, he may see the truth.

If there is any of his mother's heart in him at all, it may waken and take heed. Lily always hated bullies.

S

* * *

Time grows short. The end of the school year approaches, and Dumbledore's death looms ever-nearer. I have not died from the curse after all. I look not likely to. So I am taking stock.

I have failed with Draco entirely. He has shared nothing of his plans, neither with me nor with his friends. That he is using the room the elves call "Come and Go" is all that I know. I have discussed with Dumbledore whether the tapestry opposite should be supplemented or replaced by a painting to give warning, but he thought its appearance too likely to tip Draco off to our watching.

I have done my best to teach Potter the Defence skills he may need, especially non-verbal casting. He has fought me all the way, and I repose little confidence in his ability. His reflexes, however, are adequate.

As for his moral development, I fear that is another failure. The detentions have done no more than make him sullen, as is his wont. Instead of being thankful to have avoided expulsion – which he thoroughly deserved, and Minerva tells me she told him so at length – he resents being held to account at all.

Dumbledore retains some use of his hand and the curse has not spread up his arm. His plans are still mostly unclear to me, but my part in them, at least, is known. (I wish it were not.) I see no alternative to carrying out my orders. Alerting Potter to their nature (even would he listen, which he wouldn't) achieves nothing but to anguish him ahead of time.

I believe I have taught my subject well and prepared you all to defend yourselves with better success than you could previously have dreamed of. Longbottom no longer cowers at my approach, I'm pleased to say, so perhaps next year he shall escape being hexed for incompetence. The Carrows are not patient nor are they educators.

You and Weasley have reconciled and are following Potter around like lost puppies again, although your eyes are more often on each other than on him. I believe Dumbledore intends for you to support him until the end, so this bodes well.

I have removed what I prefer not to leave behind to Spinner's End, my home, and I am as ready as I can be. Lily's forgiveness I no longer hope for, but a small stubborn part of me still dreams that I may, by the time you read this, have your compassion.

S

* * *

It is done. There are no words. There were no choices, it was him or the boy – both boys – and I kept my promise. I protected the children, and I will protect them while I live. While I can.

You were outside my door, you and the Lovegood girl. How did you know? I sent you to tend Filius, to keep yourselves and him out of harm's way. I hope you went.

It is done. I killed him. I killed him and took the Death Eaters away, I sent Draco on ahead, and gave Potter a few last, much-needed lessons in duelling, and survived the Hippogriff's mauling, and saved whom I could. It wasn't enough.

"Severus, please," he begged. He didn't have to beg. Did he not know, even yet, that I am his man through and through?

S

* * *

**A/N ****The first letter contains quotes from DH, ch 33 and the second from HBP, ch 2. **

**Some canon clarifications follow:**

**We're not told that Dumbledore actually "twinkled" as he asked Snape to kill him, but his language and his "smile" suggest the twinkle to me. **

**Snape seems to have known he was to become headmaster, but there's no indication when Voldemort decided the Carrows would teach. However, Voldemort's Muggle Studies curriculum was so antithetical to the previous syllabus that I'm sure he planned Charity's replacement from the outset. Given that ****Voldemort was more forthcoming to his followers than Dumbledore, Snape's unprompted mention of the Carrows in his argument with Bellatrix suggests to me that they'd already been chosen. **

**In HBP, it seemed the Vow was a ploy to win Bellatrix's trust, but Dumbledore's orders in DH to"discover what Draco is up to ... offer him help and guidance" suggest it was Draco's trust that mattered. **

**Of course, it was Harry, not Hermione, that told the others not to touch the necklace and that asked Hagrid to rush Katie to the hospital wing, but Snape imagines otherwise.**

**Dumbledore avoided using the technical term"Horcrux" to Snape, but I believe Snape was expert enough in Dark Arts to think of it for himself.**

**Although Snape was a Death Eater, there is no evidence that he directly killed anyone before Dumbledore. I believe Dumbledore's question in DH, "How many have you watched die?" suggests he had not.**

**We don't see Neville interact with Snape in HBP, but his courage and determination grew by leaps and bounds in OotP and he openly defied Snape and the Carrows in DH. I strongly doubt Neville would still cower at Snape after having faced Bellatrix.**


	7. Change the Endings

CHANGE THE ENDINGS

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: As the chapter title hints, I've changed the ending of DH, as well as the ending of our hero. Those who prefer a fully canon-compatible story should stop reading one letter before the end (at "struck down") and ignore the next two chapters. I intend subsequently to add an alternative DH-compatible ending. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Lady Memory and Whitehound. **

**I feel I must warn that Snape's closing words may offend Christian and aggressively atheist readers alike. An explanation follows in my A/N. ****The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape has been easing his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters twenty years into the future to Hermione. It is now seventh year… **

Charity died today. I have watched people die before (chances to change their endings are pitifully few) but she was the first ever to beg me – _me!_ – for aid. What use is it to sit at the Dark Lord's right hand only to watch and do nothing?

Then he called the snake for "dinner" and I felt his hunger, Hermione. He was _eating_ death. The name he chose for his followers belongs to him, not us, and suddenly I understood. He does not "possess" the snake; he _is_ the snake. It is a Horcrux.

He has no scruples to stop him splitting his soul for immortality, nor would he aim so low as to stop at one. Since the diary in your second year I've wondered, but I imagined two or at most three. But diary, snake and boy make three by themselves, and surely "fear for the life of his snake" triggering the boy's sacrifice indicates the existence – and, by then, the destruction – of at least one other.

One? Or more? Seven is the most powerfully magical number. Would he stop there?

Lily's boy knows, I'm sure. This was the information given him last year "for him to do what he needs to do", the information I was not trusted with. (What was I ever trusted with?) And he will give his all. Not for one moment do I doubt that, and it keeps me still tethered, still obedient. I can't save his life, but I can at least ensure his death is not useless.

But how many other lives must I pay to do it?

My predecessor is still pulling the strings. On his orders, I have this very day told the Dark Lord what date the boy leaves Petunia's house. I have already planted the idea with Fletcher to protect him with decoys, multiple Potters to draw the Dark Lord's fire. Targets. I _know_ you will be one of them … Gryffindor.

Fly safely, Hermione. Survive.

S

* * *

It was not you, Hermione! Surely it was not you I maimed! You were riding a thestral, not a broom, you must have been. You hate brooms.

(I too. I forced myself to learn after that first disastrous try but I much prefer my own propulsion. Hah, you did not know I could fly free, did you?) But when Yaxley aimed at Lupin's back, I couldn't watch another colleague die, not so soon. His wand arm was too small a target, but I dared not reveal my betrayal by aiming more directly. I can't afford to lose the Dark Lord's trust and with it all my usefulness. So I took a chance.

And failed, as usual. I hope it was not you I maimed.

Moody's dead, I hear. The Dark Lord killed him himself. No other Order bodies were found, so I must hope the rest of you survived. Of all the ridiculous plans! (Sometimes I think the portrait would spend every Order life to shield the boy, but how can he know it will be enough? Or does the prophecy assure that he must survive till the end?)

Is it the prophecy that causes every wand the Dark Lord holds to fail against Lily's boy? He didn't trust his own but borrowed Lucius's, and still it was destroyed. How? I don't know what answer he tortured out of Ollivander, but it seems to have sent him off to find Gregorovitch. For another wand? What wand could he desire that Ollivander could not make him? _The Deathstick?_ I imagine he's as likely to find that as Ravenclaw's Lost Diadem.

S

* * *

I stole Lily's photograph today, and her signature on a letter. It belongs to her boy, but I need it. I need the reminder. Surely he will not miss one picture; Hagrid amassed him an album in your first year.

She laughs and I can almost imagine she's smiling at me, as she used sometimes when we were children. I cannot even remember the last time she looked at me like that, only that it was long before I broke our friendship. How many times she must have wished me away but was too polite to say. Too many.

No wonder she spurned my apology. I remember how she looked at me with all the loathing and contempt I always see in her boy's eyes, the same that I used to see in his father's, in her sister's. And after that, it was worse, for she never willingly looked at me again. But she was my friend once. She used to look at me and smile with this same joy.

Even her shade must hate me now. I shall send her son to his death and she will never forgive me.

S

* * *

That fool of a boy! I told him not to say the Dark Lord's name. I told him, but when did he ever listen to me?

It was nearly disastrous. Rowle had already called the Dark Lord home. At least someone had the sense to Obliviate all witnesses so no one knew whether the boy was alone or accompanied. (The latter, surely: I doubt he even knows how to cast an Obliviate.) Was it you? You've always been a quick study. I cannot imagine him succeeding even this far without your help.

Rowle paid the price, of course. The Dark Lord chose Draco to cast the Crucios, saying it was all he was good for. Poor Draco. He understands now, too late, what it means to be a Death Eater. I remember the eulogy over Cedric Diggory in your fourth year: a lot of waffle about unity and welcome, but not a word about slavery and horror, not a word that could undeceive the misled. Had I known there was never a chance of protecting Lily's son, what might I not have said? I failed them. I failed them all.

The Ministry fell all too easily. I hear Scrimgeour died for the boy, resisting to the last. I have wondered sometimes if it was a mistake for the Order not to cooperate with him last year. Would he have staved off disaster if we had shared what we knew about the extent of the infiltration? Perhaps not, but at the least he'd have arraigned Madam Toad, and the new Muggle-born Registration Commission would be in less experienced hands.

You will need more than an Invisibility Cloak to stay hidden now. Grimmauld Place might be safe. It has far the strongest protections of any Order house, but will you dare go there, knowing I am a Secret-Keeper too? (In truth, it is Mundungus Fletcher's discretion you should worry about, not mine. I have said the Secret died with the Keeper, and fortunately, the workings of the _Fidelius_ are too obscure for anyone to contradict me.)

If you are there, stay put. Otherwise, keep on the move and don't get complacent. If ever there was a time to remember Moody's old catchword, it is now.

S

* * *

Spattergroit? I hope that is merely a ruse to conceal the Weasley boy's being in your company, for none of you can afford to get ill now. They listed your name in the _Daily Prophet_ today as "wanted for interrogation" but I hope that will be as unsuccessful as their earlier listing of Lily's boy.

Skeeter's book has caused much gloating here. Dumbledore's hypocrisy, his alliances with Grindelwald, his hidden Squib sister and her mysterious death … I wonder if Potter will still call himself Dumbledore's man after he reads it. (Supposing he reads it at all, which is doubtful.) For myself it makes no difference. If anyone can understand how a youth may change his views with age, it is I.

S

* * *

I returned to Hogwarts today. When I came here for the first time, I imagined I would find it a home. When I returned as a teacher, I knew it for a prison. This time, it is a coffin, with the lid nailed shut.

Phineas tried to welcome me to their "august company". (The very words Lucius used all those years ago. Purebloods call every company they belong to "august".)

"I have already joined one august company too many," I told him. "I no more wish to hang on these walls than hang on a gibbet."

S

* * *

A raid on the Ministry? You foolish children! What were you hoping to achieve? Was it Moody's eye you hoped to liberate or the Muggle-borns of the day? You may have saved those few, but that was a drop in the ocean, and you have made it impossible for the Order to do anything for the rest. Security has been ratcheted higher than ever and Order members who work at the Ministry are particularly closely watched.

Yaxley confirms the infiltrators numbered three, of dubious identity. (Yet I do not doubt it was you three. I know your style.) Grimmauld Place is no longer Secret-kept now. If the Dark Lord were not out of the country hunting a wand, I might have had some difficult questions to answer on that score. Lucky me.

Already your exploits have sparked imitators here. Longbottom, Weasley and Lovegood tried to steal the sword of Gryffindor (a copy only, but they didn't know that) from my office. How they thought they could get it to you I can't imagine, for I saw their ignorance of your whereabouts clearly in two minds. (Lovegood's is very curious. She was thinking of gold chains and paintings.) How _I_ am to get it to you I don't know either. But at least now I have an excuse to send the copy to Gringotts, so that when the real one turns up in the right hands, it will not be blamed on me.

I sent them for detention with Hagrid. The Carrows, of course, are salivating at the prospect of dictating and supervising punishments, but I will hold them off as long as I may.

Where are you now and what have you done with Phineas's portrait? He tells me it lies in a jumble of possessions, including enough books for a library. He gave some names that confirm my suspicions: _Secrets of the Darkest Arts_, in particular. The newest portrait smiles and says we must hope you speak your location in Phineas's hearing. A likely prospect!

S

* * *

News of you, at last! Phineas is still spluttering with fury over your blindfolding him, but it was a good thought. You must know he reports to me.

You interrogated him about the sword and the punishment your friends earned for trying to steal it, but I was a little surprised you didn't think to ask how they are now. That was almost two months ago and surely you don't imagine they've grown more cautious since, just because the school is run by Death Eaters. They have been blooded twice – in the Ministry, and here, last year – and they are eager to bloody in return.

They do not suspect my connivance in their success. All the portraits and, to a lesser extent, the ghosts answer to me, and I have instructed them to shield the rebels from discovery wherever possible. The house elves keep faith with my predecessor, but as they cannot work directly against me nor disobey my orders they must content themselves with tormenting the Carrows.

S

* * *

What has happened to Weasley? I have heard no news of his capture, yet Phineas says he hears only two voices and Weasley's is not one of them. He says he hears misery in your voices and in the frequency with which you've begun to call him. You may take care to blindfold him, but he is not blind.

Finally you're asking about your friends, after all this time. Why the sudden interest? Did you only just remember them or have you nothing else to think of? And what might that mean for the progress of your task? Is there any, or are you as stuck as you sound?

The newest portrait offers no information, and I do not ask, for clearly, he doesn't wish me to know. (He told me last year that I was "a basket that dangles on the Dark Lord's arm ... And you do it extremely well," he added. Does he think me a child to be so easily pacified?) I could order him to speak, but he is no less evasive than ever and the task I am assigned does not include acting as your assistant and general factotum.

When I learn where you are, I will bring you the sword, but how will I do that? As soon as Phineas starts to probe you pack him back into your bag. I believe I know how I may approach you, however. Lily lives yet in my Patronus (it is a doe), and her boy will see her in it and follow. I have only to stay silent and out of sight.

Your friends are well, and up to mischief, although I've no doubt they call it battle and rebellion. Dumbledore's army lives. They have no idea how a real Death Eater would react to their defiance, and I will hold off the Carrows from showing them as long as I can. I've had to reinstate Madam Toad's restrictions on student societies and gatherings of three or more students, and ban Miss Weasley from Hogsmeade visits. That will not deter her, or any of them, of course, but as long as they stay undercover, I can feign ignorance.

Do you know what it is to be hated; to be pierced at every turn by looks that wish they could kill? Even Horace will not look me in the eye. If not for the portraits – batty and boring as they are by turns – I should go mad.

S

* * *

It looks to be the most miserable Yule I've had in a long time. All who could go home did so, leaving only those whose parents are in Azkaban or dead, and a few of the staff. In such small company, the Carrows are even more obtrusive.

I miss my predecessor's physical presence. His twinkle. His garish robes. I even miss the awful crackers he always insisted on pulling with me.

I'm afraid I have bad news about one of your friends. The Lovegood girl was taken from the Hogwarts Express on her way home to be a hostage for her father's good behaviour. His joke of a paper has become the voice of free thought (I suppose it always was, in a way, although the freedom was far greater than the thought), and that is not to be borne, it seems. Draco has unwillingly confirmed to me that she is in a Malfoy dungeon.

I've sometimes thought she would have made an excellent Slytherin, but that she seems never to have felt even the tiniest trace of ambition, which is to say, dissatisfaction with her lot. You will not find this a compliment, of course, but there is more to our House's proud history than Muggle-baiting and Death Eating. Does Slytherin even still exist in your time, or has dislike turned to annihilation? In my schooldays, there were Gryffindors who found my house reason enough to try to kill me, so it doesn't seem too far a stretch.

Longbottom has surprised me. Miss Weasley adequately replaces all her brothers put together, and Lovegood used to contrive a good deal of cunning mayhem behind that vague manner, but it is the boy of the new trio who has been most openly defiant, undeterred by the stripes and hexes he earns as a result. I never thought to see the school rally around _him._

S

* * *

The Forest of Dean! I would criticise your carelessness in letting Phineas overhear if it wasn't so welcome. After he reported your location, it was the work of a moment to Apparate there from outside the castle and loose my Patronus to lead me to your general area. I could not detect your campsite, but my silver doe was more successful.

She lured Lily's boy to the frozen pool where I'd placed the sword. It needed to be "taken under conditions of need and valour", and I conceived that immersing in icy water in the middle of winter would be valorous enough. It was not deep enough for danger, I thought.

I was wrong. The boy needs a keeper. He has not even sense enough to remove a Horcrux from around his neck before threatening it with destruction. (I could sense the locket's malevolence from where I stood, and his chest held a fresh scarlet burn that I glimpsed as the locket shifted. Did he not learn from its first attack to be wary?) Had not your other friend returned at that very moment, I'd have had to jump in myself.

Whatever young Weasley is lacking, he has at least some common sense amongst the recklessness. At his first words ("Are – you – _mental_? Why the hell didn't you take this thing off before you dived?"), my disquiet eased. Between the two of you, Lily's boy should be in capable hands.

The burn is not his only new scar. I recognise the puncture marks on his arm. He's tangled with Nagini – very recently, from the looks of it. That would explain the rumours of the Dark Lord's return, and of his rage. It must have been a very close call. Luckily, the bite must have been to immobilise only, not to kill, as the anti-venin is too complex for your skills, and in any case, takes too long to brew. I carry a vial with me always, but you would not accept it from me or even from unknown hands, and you have enough experience of Polyjuice to be wary even of a proven friend. (Except Hagrid, I suppose, but how would he reach you?)

Perhaps I could use my Patronus to draw you to what would look like a secret cache? Only you and Weasley might find her silence suspicious, and she can hardly speak to you in my own voice at this present. I wonder. Could I use a memory of someone else's voice to give my doe words? It would need to be one you trusted, and words that fit. I must think about this.

S

* * *

You've escaped again. Lovegood is too dotty to present much of an obstacle, but what were you doing there in the first place and why did you stay so long that you were almost caught? I cannot imagine a reason that makes sense. You can't have thought he knew how to free his daughter or where she was kept. Indeed, I gather he claims you asked him about Beedle's tales. A likely story!

I hope the girl will not suffer for it. Bellatrix rules at Malfoy Manor now, and she needs little excuse to torture. It is only the Dark Lord's forbearance that stays her hand.

(Yes, he can forbear where it suits him. He wants to remake our world, not destroy it utterly. Magic would still exist, and Hogwarts and life, and everything but what makes living bearable, courage and freedom and family and trust.)

S

* * *

It is months since I heard any news of you. Since Weasley returned, you stopped calling on Phineas. I suppose he scolded the pair of you for the risks you took in his absence. I should rejoice in his carefulness, but I confess I miss my regular reports of your doings.

The alternate trio is down to one. Miss Weasley has not returned from her Easter trip home. It seems her family has gone into hiding. They should be safe, for a while at least. Hagrid is gone too, I'm afraid. He was foolish enough to host a "Support Harry Potter" party. I was barely able to warn him in time.

This has been the longest year of my life. Every prick of student scorn, every stab of hatred from my colleagues, freezes me. It is all I can do sometimes not to throw the lie into their faces. I am not a Death Eater, we are on the same side! Or at any rate, I am on their (your) side; no one has ever been on mine.

I used to cherish the illusion that at least I did not lie to myself. I see now that I have never done anything else. Did I really believe that you (anyone) would truly read these maudlin ravings of mine, I'd be too ashamed to send them. And yet I do not destroy them, but time-spell each one as I finish, just as if I expected you to hang on every word. More fool I.

S

* * *

The Dark Lord was here this morning, early, just as the sun was rising. He sent me back to the castle, choosing to wander the grounds alone. But he let slip a little news of you.

You escaped from Malfoy Manor, breaking out the other prisoners with you. He is furious, especially with Bellatrix, whom he left in charge. The Malfoys have all been thoroughly Crucioed for their failure.

Forgive the question, but are you quite well? Draco spoke of torture and you in one breath… (He would not met my eyes, of course. He has not since fifth year.) I rejoice at your escape, even as I tremble at the risks you take. Silly girl. How – _Why_ did you let yourselves be captured? Surely you did not let yourselves be taken for the sake of freeing the rest, and yet it seems that everywhere you go you free the oppressed.

This is not the time. Yes, redeeming captives is a laudable objective, but not for you, not now. You have the job of defeating the Dark Lord, and you must not let yourselves be distracted by any lesser good on the way. (Or do I only say this in defence of myself? Have I kept my eyes too firmly fixed on the ends to properly deal with the middles?)

S

* * *

I should have known this long silence was the prelude to another desperate escapade. Even at Gringotts you found a captive to free. But I must suppose by the Dark Lord's fury that this latest adventure was a heavy stroke against him. Another Horcrux? He has warned me to watch for you here. And I shall, if not for quite the reason he wishes.

If you come, I shall have to persuade you to flee. It's too soon. To the best of my knowledge, the snake still roams free. There is no indication that he fears for her life, which means at least one other Horcrux remains. He must not meet Lily's boy before _all_ of them are destroyed.

It is puzzling. Why would you come here, and why would he be expecting it? Has he reactivated the link between their minds? I warned my predecessor of the risk, but he insisted there was none, that the Dark Lord's soul could not bear the contact. Surely you do not expect to find a Horcrux _here_? At _Hogwarts_? Right under my predecessor's very nose?

I am racking my brains for a way to convince you to trust me. My Patronus will not be enough, not if it is my voice you hear speaking through it. If Madam Toad can produce a Patronus, why would you suppose the mere production of my doe a proof of good intentions or goodwill? Perhaps my memories … Only why would you trust me enough to dip into a Pensieve? Veritaserum is too easily subverted, apart from which you would not trust any I supplied and probably have none of your own.

I must go. Perhaps you are even now sneaking into the castle. I must find you before the Carrows do.

S

* * *

I have failed again. You were near, but I was blocked from speaking and barely escaped with my life. "Coward", Minerva called me, because I fled rather than hexed back. As if I could have borne to kill her or Pomona or Filius. Or Horace, had he joined in on their side. (Would he have stayed his hand long enough for me to explain? I really don't know.)

It is too late to beg you to leave now. You are too Gryffindor to abandon your friends to the fate you brought on them. We can't avoid the Dark Lord's wrath falling on the school, now that it is in open rebellion and he on his way back to find you. One of the Carrows must have called him here. I felt it in my own Mark.

At any rate, I have been freed of one of my promises by this expulsion. When I am able to tell Lily's boy that the Dark Lord fears for the life of his snake, I shall be freed of the other, and of my slavery. I rebelled against the Dark Lord almost two decades ago. It has only been my Order duties keeping me at his side since then.

My Patronus will take a message culled from my predecessor's own words: "Part of Voldemort lives inside Harry … while that fragment of soul, unmissed by Voldemort, remains attached to, and protected by, Harry, Lord Voldemort cannot die … Voldemort himself must do it… when he does set out to meet his death, it will, truly, mean the end of Voldemort…"

Surely the boy will believe that.

And then I shall be free at last, free to save and protect as many as I can, free to fight without compulsion.

After – if there is an after for me (Do I even want an after? I'm not sure.) – perhaps I will find a den somewhere to hide in quiet obscurity. Somewhere they will never find me. (A pipedream. I cannot imagine such a pleasant end to my story.) Think of me kindly sometimes, twenty-years-hence Hermione, if you think of me at all. If the woman to whom I write indeed exists.

S

* * *

Struck down from behind by Longbottom. How he must have exulted. The first I knew was when I woke up in this cell. They have given me paper to write a confession and I use it instead to write to you one last time, although I know no way of getting it to you without my wand. Broken, they tell me. I cannot even prove it was I that sent Lily's boy the Patronus. (Would I have fared better had I answered the Dark Lord's call? But when Lucius told me the snake was protected, I saw no need to bow and scrape again.)

The evidence Albus left was destroyed, of course. He had always too much faith in man's goodness. They plan to send me through the Veil tonight, in front of as many onlookers as the room will hold.

I, who have nothing left to hope for, find that I have still one last hopeful dream, that I see your face once more before the end. I mean no blasphemy, but the words of my childhood seem strangely fitting. Into your care I commend my spirit.

S

* * *

**A/N The last paragraph was the first part of the chapter **–** possibly the very first part of the entire story – to be written. That was around two years ago. Because the twisting of Christian liturgy may offend some, I feel I need to explain why I found it necessary to keep it and even emphasise it. **

**The wizarding world has neither religion nor humanism, no attempt to grapple with death and loss. Snape's understanding of his childhood lessons remains at the level of his age at the time, precluding belief, but something of their power remains with him, causing him to reproduce imperfectly the half-forgotten patterns. After all, what has he been doing in these letters to Hermione if not "confessing" himself? And what can he be other than truthful?**

**For those less familiar with DH, I include a timeline by chapter and date/month, with events distributed into their time of occurrence, not their time of mention:**

**"Charity died..." - ch 1, late July  
****"It was not you..." - chs 4-5, July 27  
****"I stole Lily's photograph..." - before ch 9, late July  
"****That fool of a boy..." - ch 9, Aug 1  
"****Spattergroit..." - ch 11, Aug 22  
"****I returned to Hogwarts..." - ch 12, Sept 1  
"****A raid on the Ministry..." - chs 12-13, Sept 2  
"****News of you..." - ch 15, late Oct  
"****What has happened to Weasley..." - ch 16, Oct/Nov  
"****It looks to be..." - ch 16, Dec 20  
"****The Forest of Dean..." - ch 19, Dec 26  
"****You've escaped again..." - chs 20-21, Dec 28  
"****It is months..." - ch 22, March  
"****The Dark Lord..." - chs 23-24, late March  
"****I should have known..." - ch 26, May 1  
"****I have failed..." - ch 30, May 1  
"****Struck down from behind..." - end, May**

**Some quotes are from DH, for instance ch 33. There's no indication in canon whether Snape knows about Voldemort's Horcruxes, but I had him recognise the diary as one in ch 2, and if he is an expert in Dark Arts, he should have recognised the "fragment of soul … attached to, and protected by Harry" as one.** **"Seven is the most powerfully magical number" is Voldemort's reasoning in HBP, ch 23.**

**I've chosen for Snape to call Umbridge "Madam Toad", in line with ch 5.**

**I have chosen to identify Snape's memory of "a girl … laughing as a scrawny boy tried to mount a bucking broomstick" (OotP, ch 26) as Snape's first attempt at broom flight.**

**The "august company" line is not canon. I've taken it from JK's description of the portraits when asked about Snape's absence in ch 36, and extrapolated it to Lucius's recruitment pitch. We don't actually know that he was Snape's recruiter, but it seems likely enough.**

**I place the attempt to steal the sword very early in the school year, because Griphook knew it before he left Gringotts, and he joined up with Dirk Cresswell a "couple of days" after Dirk went on the run, which must have been around the time of the trio's Ministry invasion on Sept 2. (The information against him is openly discussed by more than one Ministry worker in chs 12 and 13.) In ch 15, the day Ron storms off, Dirk says he's been on the run "six weeks ... seven ... I forget..."**

**Luna's "gold chains and paintings" is a reference to the portraits in her bedroom, linked with what appear at first to be golden chains, but are actually the word friends "repeated a thousand times in golden ink..."**

**We don't know when Neville took centre stage. I've placed it fairly early in the year.**

**We don't know if a Patronus could penetrate Hermione's wards, but there has to have been some way for Snape to narrow down their location within the forest.**

**The captive freed at Gringotts was the dragon.**

**Patronus messages always use the sender's voice in canon, but I've chosen to suppose Snape used his powers of invention to craft a method for using another voice. (I wonder if Polyjuice would work, BTW.)**


	8. Beside You

BESIDE YOU

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: This story became AU as of the last letter in ch 7. I intend to add an alternative DH-compatible and ETE (Epilogue! That Epilogue!) ending after ch 9. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Cecelle and Lady Memory. **

**The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape has been easing his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters twenty years into the future to Hermione. Events proceeded as canon until Voldemort summoned Snape to the Shack. Hearing of Nagini's magical protection from the messenger, Snape ignored the summons and sent Dumbledore's message to Harry by Patronus. His last letter of seventh year was written from a prison cell awaiting execution and remained unsent – but not unread...**

Dear Harry,

Don't open the little packet yet. I need to explain a bit first. And don't destroy the contents, or you will never get to read the end of this and I need you to. Please.

Where do I begin? I suppose with that letter that was found in Professor Snape's cell, the one he wrote instead of a confession, while waiting to go through the Veil. (_The Quibbler_'s version was right by the way. Those bits that could only make sense if he was lying or insane _were_ in the original letter, just as Luna insisted. I've seen it. Of course, the Ministry and _The Prophet_ denied them. Who but Luna _could_ have believed in Dumbledore trying to exonerate his murderer, and Snape having a doe Patronus? Ridiculous!)

How we hated him. If it was possible for anyone to hate him more than you did, it was me. Hating him was the only thing that cut through the fog of losing Ron, and even a few years later when I started at the Ministry, a small unacknowledged part of me wanted to steal a Time Turner, jump back into the past, and hunt him down to exact my own private vengeance. Or failing him, his mysterious confidante that we'd given up looking for. (It was a hopeless search, of course. She didn't even exist yet.)

But the Time Turners had been destroyed back in our fifth year, and they hadn't started rebuilding them. There had been too many other things to work on. By the time the first one was done, going back seemed silly. Who wanted to be stranded back in the past for so long and have to live those years forward again?

I said his confidante didn't exist, and that is both true and not. She was alive, but she hadn't yet become his confidante. His letters were in her future. My future. (Don't open the packet yet. Let me finish explaining first.)

The first letter reached me almost seven years ago. I was so angry and disgusted at someone's idea of a sick joke that I didn't read it at first, just crumpled it up and chucked it in the back of my closet. I don't know why I didn't burn it. I did think about it, but somehow I didn't go ahead. I threw it away and pretended I'd forgotten it. I'd put all that behind me, finally, and I wasn't going to reopen it.

The second letter came almost seven months later. Then after another four months or so, there was a third. (I say "almost … or so", because that was how it seemed to me then. But I came to see that his letters reached me exactly twenty years after he claimed to have written them. I have verified this with my Pensieve: June 11, 2012; December 25, 2012; May 8, 2013.) The next arrived three weeks later; he had sent it on June 1, three days after you rescued Ginny in the Chamber.

I couldn't pretend any longer. I dug out the other letters, smoothed them out and read them one after the other. But it was another year before the next one came.

Naturally, I still didn't think the cell letter could be meant for me. These letters had been written years earlier, and I thought that surely he'd found someone closer to home to write to since then. A priest, even – they can't disclose what they hear in confession, and by the time that death row letter was written he had sins enough to confess. Why would a confirmed Death Eater continue seeking sympathy from one of his chief enemies?

I still hated him. If he hadn't killed Dumbledore, everything would be different and maybe Ron would be alive. (And that was at least half-right. Everything _would_ have been different.) I remember how I read those early letters with a sneer on my face almost as nasty as the one he always had for you. Let him rant and rave about "being lied to" and outwitted by schoolchildren (us); let him pretend to fear the return of his master! I knew better. Fancy him thinking I might care about his problems.

I _didn't_ care. I read his letters only to laugh and jeer. It was something to do when I felt more down than usual.

It was that fifth letter, the one he wrote after we saved Sirius from the Dementors, that first made me feel ashamed. Not for hexing him, because I still don't see what else we could have done, and not for hating him, because, well, that hadn't changed. And not for leaving him lying untended on the floor while we talked, not bothering to give even the most cursory check that he was alive, because I still felt, unreasonably, that what he did later retroactively justified us. Horrible of me, but that's what I felt.

No, I was ashamed of being stupid. Twenty years had passed, and it had still never occurred to me that he was right to be suspicious of Professor Lupin (He thought a murderer was stalking you and did nothing to stop him, _nothing_!) and right to bind him too. (A werewolf, at full moon! And Ron with a broken leg that prevented him from running, even if there was anywhere to run to!) I've always been a bit proud of my brains – the only thing I have _to_ be proud of – and he showed me that, when it came to the point, I was as clueless as Crabbe and Goyle.

I hated him even more then. He'd called me an "insufferable know-it-all" in class, and he was right. I hoped he meant it when he said he'd never write again. He said he must have been mad to write at all, and I agreed. And I told myself I had been right to be sure his confidante was not me. Anyone but me.

But somehow as the next year wore on without any word, I began to feel … "uneasy" probably best describes it … about his silence. I read his letters again, and then again, but with different feelings. Guilt, I suppose; I couldn't help wondering if we'd pushed him too far that night, if it was our ingratitude and indifference that influenced him to turn away from the Order, to turn back to Voldemort. For we were ungrateful. We _knew_ he'd saved your life in first year, kept you on your broom till Quirrell was distracted, and we _knew_ he'd opened himself to ridicule to protect you at the next match. (And he didn't even _like_ brooms; he said in one of his letters that his first lesson was a disaster and he'd had to force himself to learn.) However horrible he was to us all the time, we should have remembered that, and at least cared whether he lived or died. (I think you and Ron did have a preference, but it wasn't the right one.)

Then Voldemort returned and Snape wrote to me again. I almost couldn't believe it when I saw the letter waiting for me when I woke up. I could hardly breathe as I ripped open the envelope, I was so afraid of what he might say. Whose side he was on. Stupid, I know, when I knew he was going to turn sooner or later, but I was.

And he was still true. That funny look in his eye when Dumbledore asked "If you are ready … if you are prepared" was fear, not cunning, not wavering. Fear, and a little bit of hurt that he was still not trusted, even by the man who knew him best.

I cried for him then. Not a lot, just a few tears in my eyes, because he was so brave and so desolate and I didn't know how he could have gone from being that quiet hero to murdering Dumbledore in only two short years. What did Voldemort offer that we didn't, what was it Snape needed enough to break for? A listening ear, a bit of encouragement, a smile of welcome? It wouldn't have been hard to offer more than we did, because we offered nothing.

I spent the next year waiting for the axe to fall, waiting for _him_ to fall. I was sure he'd stop writing after that, and though he wrote more often than ever before, nine times in the next year, and though every letter reassured me by its tangible concern for our welfare, every gap between letters filled me with dread. There was an almost three months' break after Umbridge banned Fred and George from Quidditch. It went past Arthur Weasley almost dying and into your Occlumency lessons, past the Death Eaters' escape from Azkaban, and still no letter. I thought _for sure_ he must have turned – that fight with Sirius that the Weasleys and I walked in on, the reunion with old Death Eater friends – but, no, another three weeks and there was a letter grumbling at your stubborn refusal to learn, and another, three weeks later, warning me not to let Umbridge see me looking smug.

We knew so little of his life outside the classroom that it was hard even to imagine what might have been his breaking-point. The injury to Montague, a student in his house? Someone he met and loved, perhaps, the intended recipient of that death row letter? I even wondered if maybe the Order had made Voldemort's mistake and killed the person he loved.

(_Your mum_, Harry. You were wrong in the hospital wing the night Dumbledore died, when you said Snape didn't think your mum "was worth a damn either". He worshipped her. He asked Voldemort to spare her and Dumbledore to save her, he bound himself over to protect you for her sake, and he mourned her till the end of his life.)

Only he hadn't mentioned anyone, and besides, why would he be writing to me instead of this new her, if there was a her? (There was no one, of course. There never had been except your mum.)

And then there was a short angry note when we got Dumbledore forced out of Hogwarts, and a longer, angrier one when you looked in his Pensieve (his "worst memory", he said, how he "pushed away his dearest friend with one unmeant insult" … and by the by, how _dared_ you snoop into his Pensieve like that, and then _lie _to me about it?), another complaint when the Weasley twins left (he was sure it was your fault, that your "reckless actions" had "forced them to sacrifice themselves to protect you"), and still another after we went to the Ministry ("Cannot you contrive to avoid almost getting yourself killed for even one year? _Not even one?"_ he asked.), and then the summer holidays began and he was _still_ ours. Less than a year till he would kill Dumbledore, and he was as far from turning as ever, and Great Merlin, what could have _happened_ in that last year to make him?

And then his next letter came, almost immediately, and I found out. You wouldn't believe what Dumbledore asked him to do! I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't been convinced of his desperate sincerity by his previous letters, whose authenticity I consider beyond dispute. He had no wand, no time, no opportunity in his cell to forge and Time Spell dozens of letters, to reconstruct the last seven years in such detail, each date, each sequence of events so exactly in accord with what he did and knew, or could have known or guessed, at the time they occurred. He could have done it before, I suppose, hedging his bets, but why would he do anything so pointless as to spell faked exonerating letters to arrive after his death, to someone who was more likely to burn them than to read them?

In any case, I know he did not. Trust me to have thoroughly checked for every type of deception or dark magic or trickery. He _did_ write them as they happened, he _did_ mean them, and Dumbledore _did_ ask him … Well, you will see.

Open the packet now, Harry. Read my copies of his letters (the originals are too precious to leave behind) before you read any more of mine. You must, in any case, if you want to read the rest. I have spelled it to be indecipherable until you read every last one of his aloud. I defy anyone, even you who have hated him for twenty-eight years, since the first time you laid eyes on each other, to believe him a liar. He always told us the truth when we were kids, and he told the truth here as well.

* * *

Oh, Harry. You can see, can't you, why I have to leave. You can see that he had nothing and no one, and the only possible person to have appeared in the Death Chamber and snatched him away just before he reached the Veil is me.

(Horrible, barbaric way to die; surrounded by a jeering crowd, shouting and hexing their hatred, urging him through the Veil, and no way else to escape them than to obey. Sometimes I think our world never left the Dark Ages. It's such a relief now that I wasn't there in that crowd. I hated him enough to be, but at the time I couldn't seem to rouse myself to do anything but cry. Going back to meet your younger self is terribly dangerous, of course, but it's not that; I don't think I could have lived with myself these last three years if I'd been one of that baying mob. Too horrible for words.)

My choice is as clear and, well, easy in a way, as it was in our schooldays, when I always knew my place was beside you, helping you, even when my heart was ripping in two to follow Ron that terrible day he walked out of our tent. I knew there was no contest, knew it with my heart and my head. I am not a promise-breaker, and anyway, there was no place for Mudbloods in a world where you failed.

But you don't need me now. You have Ginny and the girls and that precious little one that isn't born yet, and I have only my work and my vicarious life through yours. It is I who have needed you. If Ron hadn't died… A lot of things would be different if Ron hadn't died.

But that wasn't Severus's fault. He did all he could to protect us, always.

We owe him. You must see that. And I have more personal reasons. How could I have read his letters from those last two years without loving him? The bravest, truest, dearest man I ever met. I haven't forgotten Ron – I could never forget Ron – but it is Severus who holds first place in my dreams now. _All_ my dreams; pleasant ones, daydreams, even nightmares. I cannot tell you how many times I've woken up trembling in the last year from visions of arriving too late, reaching the Death Chamber to find him gone and only the smears of mud and blood and filth before the Veil to show by his footprints he was there. I know I did not fail, I was _not _too late – and yet, I can't sleep. But my preparations are all made now. I need wait no longer.

It must seem mad to you, but I believe I have a chance of happiness again. He knows what it is to bury your heart in a loved one's grave, and live in useless mourning, but I dare to hope that he has learnt to care also for me. In those last years, he grew so warm in his admiration of my younger self, so reliant on the compassion of my older self, that I hope it. Often he hardly knew which me he was writing to, but his solicitude never wavered. And if not, at least I will no longer lie awake regretting past hates and neglects, at least he will know that he is loved, can be loved. Your mother was his friend, but I do not think she ever loved him.

Don't hate me for saving Severus and not Ron. You know I couldn't. We all saw Ron die, bravely as he'd lived, and everyone who was there saw Severus being rescued by some woman who appeared out of nowhere and left just as quickly. No one could figure out how she broke through the Anti-Apparition wards. But then, we were looking for a contemporary, not a returnee from the future.

When I began working with time I tried desperately to change the fabric of reality and save Ron. Every Unspeakable knows that events are only mutable if they are not "seen", but I wouldn't accept it. I tried for years to find a hole to let me through to Ron's rescue, but there is none. "Seeing Is BeSealing", as we say in the trade.

And finally I realised that Ron wouldn't have wanted it anyway. How he would have scolded me if I'd tried to stop him taking that hex. It was McGonagall's chess set all over again, just like in first year. And trying to change more of the battle than that would have been worse. Who knows what might have happened – if it was possible for anything to happen except what did?

I like to think you will clear Severus's name, now that you know the truth. You have a great heart, Harry, great enough to admit you have been wrong about him for most of your life. But it will not matter to Severus and me, whether we are separate or together where we are. With all the advances in Time-Tuner technology, we have only extended the reach, not changed the directionality. We can still only go pastwards, not back to the future.

I would not bring him back in any case. I don't forget that he said his letters would only reach me if he "did not exist in my time" and I hope he will have many more extra years of life than fourteen. Besides, searches and sightings still pop up out of the blue even now, and I want better for him than a life on the run. Where I am taking him, no one can follow.

Give my love to Ginny and the children. Sorry that I can't watch them grow. I will always remember you.

Love,  
Hermione

* * *

****

**A/N For those who are wondering:**

**My theory of time – based on the somewhat counterintuitive concept of "quantum indeterminacy" or "observer's paradox", ie that observation/measurement affects the system being observed/measured – is that events become immutable if observed by sentient beings, but not otherwise. The past cannot be changed unless it exists in a state of uncertainty, like Schrodinger's cat.**

**(Schrodinger's cat refers to Schrodinger's thought experiment in which a cat sealed in a box with a radioactive substance and a vial of poison gas set up to break if a single radioactive particle decays, such that there is a 50 percent chance of this occurring, could theoretically be described as simultaneously alive and dead, until you open the box to see.)**

**From this, I extrapolate that the only past events that could be influenced by time travel are unobserved events, which are still in a state of flux, and you wouldn't be "changing" them so much as determining them. As soon as a sentient observer pins down the event one way or the other, it settles into invariability. ****Thus Harry and Hermione were able to save Sirius and Buckbeak in PoA because they weren't changing something that had happened differently; it had always happened that way. Everything canon observed first time around was consistent with what happened second time around.**

**(Of course, this raises issues of free will vs determinism. My personal view on this is that it only seems problematic to us because we experience life unidirectionally, ie forwards. If we could step out of time, we would see the passage of events like an enormous completed tapestry, but every twist of its thread is/was created by one or more freely-made decisions by the sentients figuring in it. )**

**This theory is consistent with Dumbledore's adjurations to Harry and Hermione, "_You must not be seen._ Miss Granger, you know the law -- you know what is at stake ... _you -- must -- not -- be -- seen,_" and Hermione's "Harry, _we mustn't be seen,_" in PoA. **

**It does, however, require labelling Hermione's further explanations, "Nobody's supposed to change time, nobody! You heard Dumbledore, if we're seen ... ... You wouldn't understand, you might even attack yourself! Don't you see? Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time ... loads of them ended up killing their past or future selves by mistake!'" as a child's imperfect understanding of the subject. **

**Time _can't_ be changed. Time-Turners create a fold in the tapestry of time that allows sentients to leap from one time-spot to another, but because we *live* time forwards, we can only *jump* backwards (or we create a hole in the cloth). The tapestry can accommodate double threads as long as they remain separate, but people who meet themselves in the past – ie, who are "seen" by their past selves – create a "doubling-point" explosion of excess energy that forces termination of one or other of their life-threads. (It's less dangerous for the jumper to "see" a past self, because the latter has "already" pinned down that event-sequence in the process of experiencing it. Thus Harry and Hermione were able to watch their past selves in relative safety.)**

**"BeSealing" is not a real word, of course. It is a construct of the same type as befriend, bestir, betide. Presumably, Unspeakables are as prone to specialist jargon as Muggle techno-geeks. **

**Dates in this chapter are based on the Lexicon, and quotes are mostly from earlier "Ether" chapters. There are also some from PoA and GoF.**


	9. In My Favour

IN MY FAVOUR

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: ****This chapter completes the AU arc that began with the final ch 7 letter, in which Snape did not answer Voldemort's summons to the Shack, but notified Harry of Dumbledore's message by Patronus and returned to help the defenders, only to be captured and later sentenced to execution by Veil (a medieval punishment reinstated for lack of obedient Dementors). ****I intend that chs 10 and 11 will comprise an alternative DH-compatible ending. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Cecelle and Lady Memory. **

**The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape had eased his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters twenty years into the future to Hermione. He never expected that she would return to save his life. **

They pushed him roughly through the door of the Death Chamber, unwashed, unshaven and unfed, and slammed and warded it behind him. He stumbled to a halt just before the first stone step, his arms flung out for balance, and looked up and around for that one face.

But there were too many, and in a moment he was clawing at bats erupting from his nose, shying away from the sulphur of rotten eggs, slipping on slime underfoot. Boils, a tickling hex, _Tarantallegra_…

He danced and skidded and crashed and slid his way down the stone steps. The crowd roared with laughter when he confusedly lurched sideways, and shouted suggestions to the designated hexers seated on either side of the aisle. Shielding his head with his arms, he turned and struggled on.

The floor was level under his feet now and he could hear the Veil murmuring. It was almost louder than the crowd. And then the crowd's noise dropped away and his hands met fabric.

Soft arms came around him, held him as colours swirled and the world dropped away from under and finally resettled. He buried his face in curls and rough wool, peripherally aware that they were simultaneously in the same place and not: the room was hushed and dim and cavernously empty, but for the whispering Veil. Fingers tickled the back of his neck, plucking at his hair, and then the crush of Apparition took them sideways to a new refuge, equally dim but smaller and somehow rounder, with something dark and angular reaching above his head. He pulled away and dropped to his knees, retching till the bile came.

She conjured a basin, a hand-towel and some kind of soft blue light, and followed him down to hold back his hair from his face.

"You're safe, I have you, you're safe, I have you," she crooned.

"Sorry," he muttered at last, turning aside to mop his face and neck, and rub at his hair. The towel was dampened and smelled slightly of lavender. "Sorry." Not sure what he was apologising for, but unable to stop himself.

"We're safe here," she said, and he looked at her, finally curious.

The light proved to be a jar of blue flame, set partway up a spiral staircase in the middle of the room. He blinked. She was… she was… He glanced around the circular room painted in the lurid colours of delirium with a riot of flowers, birds and insects, and then back to the woman. She was older than the girl he had last seen almost a year ago outside his office as he raced off to the Tower; older, sadder, grimmer, but her eyes were as brown, her hair as heavy.

He put out his hand and dropped it before it touched her. _"Hermione?"_ he said.

"Yes."

"I – I died? I fell through?" It must have been closer than he knew. That swirl of colour? But the pull had felt backwards. The Veil had been in front. Hadn't it?

"No, Severus," she said softly, lifting the Time-Turner on her necklace to show him. "I came back for you."

He bowed his head, rubbing at the deep creases in his brow. "Why?"

From the corner of his eye, he could see her smiling at him.

"Because I could."

He knew he was gaping, but it didn't seem to matter. How could it when it wasn't real? One could say anything in dreams, do anything_, be _anything. He drank the potions she pulled out of her small beaded bag for him, lay down on the bed she conjured, closed his eyes and let her mutter counter-curses and cancelling-spells over him, and didn't stir until he heard "Scourg –" He flinched and covered his mouth, and she stopped.

"I won't if you don't like it," she said. "I was only going to clean the muck off to make sure I hadn't missed anything."

"Someone choked me with that once," he muttered. "I don't suppose it matters now."

"No, it doesn't matter now." She laid a soft hand on his cheek and smiled at him briefly. Then she was rummaging through her bag again, pulling out a frypan, kitchen utensils, a pile of blankets, a string bag of onions, a jar of coloured balls, and a footbath. "Ah, here it is." She sent it around the staircase to the far side of the room, enlarged it till it would hold a man and filled it with an _Aguamenti Fervens_. "Shall I conjure you a screen or do you trust me not to look?"

He shrugged and she handed him the jar of coloured balls and a towel she'd just pulled out of the bag. He turned the jar around and over dubiously, and handed it back to her.

"Yarrow bath bombs," she told him, wandering over to the bath and dropping one in. "Very refreshing. Don't dawdle, Severus. The quicker you get in, the quicker I can make you supper and get you to bed."

Even for a dream that was startling enough to jerk his head up and make him stare. But she had walked over to the table and was opening a carton of brown eggs.

"Fried or scrambled?" she asked.

The bath was fizzing. He dipped a finger in thoughtfully.

"Fried," he said.

There was no need for modesty in dreams. He made short work of undressing and slipped into the steaming water. There was just enough room to stretch his legs almost straight. He closed his eyes and only opened them when the smell of eggs on toast passed under his nose.

"I'm not ready to wake up," he said.

"You don't have to."

* * *

He awoke the next morning, refreshed, and hot with embarrassment. He had not objected to her pushing their beds together the previous night, and she was still there, curled up against his back, and so were the painted cupboards, the remains of last night's dinner and, just on the edge of his vision, the bath he'd luxuriated in, right in front of her.

"You're real," he said, sitting bolt upright.

She blinked and yawned and mumbled something unintelligible. He wanted to shake her and he wanted to leave, very quickly, before she even woke up. But there was nowhere to go. His nightshirt had rucked up in his sleep and his legs were bare under his blanket. He tugged the shirt downward and the blanket upward and wrapped both more tightly around himself.

"Severus?" she muttered. She squinted up at his face, rubbed her eyes, and sat up next to him, her feet tucked under her and her knees poking his thigh through the layers of cloth. "You're properly awake now, aren't you?" she said resignedly. "I was hoping you'd sleep longer, but I should have known you wouldn't. I don't suppose I could persuade you to hold the interrogation until after breakfast and the loo?"

"What did you mean 'because you could'?" he asked. His bladder could wait a bit longer.

"You of all people should understand. If you have the chance to save someone you love, how can you not try? Even if they don't love you back; even if they never will."

He winced and she touched his hand lightly. He snatched it away. It was she who didn't understand.

"I am Cain," he said simply, clenching his fists on the blanket's edge. "Cursed." _My brothers' blood cries out from the earth. _"I must be hateful, for everyone has hated me." _Hated or despised._ There was a difference, he supposed, but not enough to matter.

"They didn't know you. They saw the mud on your clothes and thought that was you." He shook his head. Had anyone known him better in his youth than Lily, in his teaching years than Dumbledore?

She seemed to catch his thought from the air. "Dumbledore trusted you."

"To kill him. It's not a job one gives a friend."

Her eyes kindled and for a moment he thought she would argue, but then she shook her head and sighed.

"To protect the children. To look after them when he couldn't."

"And what a magnificent job I did!" he said bitterly. "How many died in the battle? They wouldn't tell me." They'd hexed him for asking. Why would the Traitor want to know, if not to count his successes?

She chewed on her lip as she silently ticked them off on her fingers. He wanted to rail at her for not knowing the numbers by heart. So what if it had been at least twenty years ago for her? For him it was yesterday.

At last, she was done. "Twenty-six who were current students. Five who would have been current students if they hadn't been on the run. Thirteen who used to be your students. Two who were at school with you. Six were members of the Order." She hesitated and swallowed. "Ron was one."

"I'm sorry," he said helplessly. "You should hate me."

"I did, for a long time," she admitted. "But it wasn't your fault that Ron died. It wasn't your fault any of them died. You did your best."

"Not my fault? I killed the old man myself. And there were so many I betrayed to their deaths; Moody, Vance, the Potters." His voice failed and he swung his legs off the bed to leave. He flinched when her arms came around him, but he didn't resist. "He that touches pitch shall be defiled," he muttered.

"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow," she said, carding her fingers through his hair. It was already greasy again, he knew. "But you're not a believer, are you?"

"I believe in Hell," he said. Fire and brimstone.

"Of course you do. You've been living there."

* * *

They couldn't stay like that forever, of course. He pulled away first, looking around the circular room at stove, sink and cupboards brightly patterned with burgeoning nature. With the sun streaming in, it hurt his eyes even more.

"What is this place? A banshee's bakehouse?" he grumbled.

She choked down laughter. "It's Luna Lovegood's kitchen. July, 1996. They went Snorkack-hunting that year and they won't be back for almost five weeks."

"Lovegood's kitchen?" he thundered, aghast. "Was there nowhere of your own to take me?"

"It's not as easy as you seem to think," she told him, standing up and stretching out the kinks in her shoulders as he tried not to notice how the sunlight outlined her shape. "I needed a building I could rely on being empty and unwarded, where any magic would pass unnoticed. I wondered about Spinner's End, but how was I to know when it was empty and what wards you might have had? You were in no fit case to tell me last night."

"Why not a tent? We could have camped out somewhere and not inflicted ourselves where we weren't wanted," he said bitterly.

"Luna's been on your side longer than I have," she replied, pulling out her little bag again and rummaging inside. "There's never been a time she wouldn't have welcomed you. And if you're worrying about her father, don't. He owes me. Or he will in two years time when he tries to turn us in and we still protect him. Here."

He stared at his wand, miraculously whole.

"They told me they broke it." He ran afinger along the smooth wood. There was not even a hint of a join. He flexed his fingers and took it into his hand, whole again, his breath catching.

"They did. But, well, the pieces were kept in the archives and I knew where Harry hid the Elder Wand –"

"The Elder –? He _found_ the Deathstick? When?"

He looked again at his wand and then past it to the flowered wall. There was even a spray of purple anise hyssop with Gatekeeper and Chalkhill Blue butterflies flitting around it. He closed his eyes tightly and rubbed them with his other hand; opened them again to notice a kingfisher painted on the tap. His lips tightened.

"He didn't _find_ it. It came to him after Vol, er, You-Know-Who took it from Dumbledore's tomb and tried to kill him with it. Did you know Dumbledore had it? I feel a bit guilty about tricking the mastery away, but it's probably for the best. Harry doesn't use it, you know, and he's not such an exceptional dueller that he couldn't lose it in a fight. But with me in the past and the wand in the future, it should be safe."

Mallows and heartsease on the nearest cupboard, with hollyhocks and cowslips and maidenhair, swallows and lacewings and hungry dunnock chicks, berries and acorns and bluebells. Wasps, he thought. There ought to be wasps.

"He had to die to bring the Dark Lord down. But I was told he lived. Are you sure there's no remnant of the Dark Lord wandering the world like last time?" He raised his head, his voice suddenly sharp. "Or is there, and that's why you came back? I don't know what use you imagine I could be; what use was I until now?"

"You were the pivot the whole story turned around," she said. "If you hadn't loved Lily and begged for her life, Harry wouldn't have survived the first time they met. Her death became sacrifice because she was given a choice. And if you hadn't told him he was a Horcrux, he'd not have known to let You-Know-Who kill it. He passed through death then and came back and the next time the wand was raised against him, it backfired, and no more Dark Lord. All the other Horcruxes were already gone by then, luckily. He won't be back. You're free."

He snorted at that. "Free? Don't you mean finished? Used up, consumed and thrown away?"

"No, I mean completed, fulfilled, discharged. You don't owe anything to anyone but yourself. You're free. And I'm glad."

* * *

Breakfast was eggs again, scrambled this time. He was hungry enough not to care.

"You were wrong, you know," she said, after the silence became too long. "When you said Harry would never defeat Him with _Expelliarmus_. That's exactly what he used." She grinned at him. "The first Defence spell you taught him. Funny that it became his signature spell."

He concentrated on buttering his toast. So at least he'd managed to teach the boy something, even if only by accident. Not that the boy would ever have acknowledged his help; even saving his life hadn't been enough for that.

"I wish the two of you could have known each other better," she said. "He really liked the Half-Blood Prince, before he knew it was you. He wouldn't hear a word against him, even after he half-killed Malfoy with a spell from the Prince's book."

"And when he knew it was me, I suppose he wouldn't hear a word in my favour."

"You weren't judging him any more favourably," she reminded him. "Even when he did something right, like sending Katie with Hagrid after the necklace got her, you didn't for a moment think that could be Harry. You thought any quick thinking must be me. I never thought, back then, that I'd ever accuse you of praising me too much."

He scowled at his toast and took a sip of tea. If she was fishing for compliments, she'd fish in vain. But she changed the subject without rancour.

"You must have so many questions that I can answer. We have time and to spare. Ask whatever you want."

He thought about all the nights he'd lain awake, imagining the future to distract himself from the present. "Tell me about you."

So she did. She started with the aftermath of the war, worked forwards to her decision to return for him, in the process answering his unasked questions about friends, colleagues, ex-students, enemies and other acquaintances. The Malfoys had got off lightly, on the plea of duress and, for Narcissa and Draco, the proof of having turned against the Dark Lord before the end, however passively. No one could dispute that Draco had known all along how to enter the Room of Requirement, and kept silent.

Then she skipped backwards to the years he'd just lived through, speaking of Dumbledore with, he thought, as much polite restraint as disillusion would allow, then forwards again to her plans for the immediate future.

"It's up to you, really," she told him, and he tried not to flinch at a new responsibility so soon. But she noticed, anyhow. "I don't mean you decide for me, only that I want you to feel completely free to decide for yourself. I told you, you don't owe anything to anyone. I've burned my bridges behind me, coming back, but don't think I didn't think it through completely beforehand. I made the choice as much for my benefit as yours. I want to go adventuring in the past. But you don't have to come with me. What you choose is up to you, even if –" Her voice trailed away. He watched her swallowing and wondered.

"If?"

She stared at her fists. "I have wondered if you might choose to go through the Veil, anyway. You said in one of your letters that you weren't sure you wanted to ... I mean, you weren't sure what you wanted. If that's what you want, if you're really and truly sure that's what you want after you've had time to think, I won't stop you. I'll even come and farewell you through." She scrubbed viciously at her nose with the back of her hand. "If you want that."

Well, he thought, she _was_ a Gryffindor.

* * *

There was one topic they still hadn't covered. All day, he'd listened and watched and prompted her to continue, and she'd taken him into her confidence as comfortably as if they were friends. It was a payment, he knew; a trade-off for the secrets he'd confided to her. She would not have him feel daunted nor indebted. She was making things even. But he was ready to ask now. He was even ready to hear her answer.

"This morning, you called me 'someone you love'," he said, as he gutted a fish from the stream. She was peeling potatoes for chips.

"You are."

"I love Lily." It was freeing to say it without qualification or apology. He never had, not aloud, not where anyone could hear. "I love Lily. Always."

"Of course you do," she replied. "I love Ron. I've always loved Ron." She looked at him. "And now I love you. Because we loved once, should we never love again?"

That was a new thought. He turned it over as she continued.

"I've thought about this a lot. I've had time to. There never was a choice. If you know anything about Time-Turners you know I never could have saved him, I only could have saved you. But if there had been, if I'd had to choose, I would have chosen you. How could Ron understand the woman I've become? He didn't even understand the person I was then." She rinsed the potatoes under the tap and dried them carefully.

There was more to it than that. He could read in her eyes that she thought Weasley hadn't needed saving, hadn't needed her, really. He'd died to save Lily's boy, and he wouldn't have thanked her for stopping him. She'd always been second-best in that menage. But he chose to answer only the spoken thought.

"And you think I could? I barely knew you then. I don't know you now." He had cut off the head and broken the backbone.

"You know enough. I'm the person who read your letters instead of burning them. I came back for you when you didn't even know to ask. You commended your spirit into my care, and I am here to care for it. Isn't that enough to start with? I'm not asking for an irrevocable commitment. I'm just hoping that you'll be willing to try. You're starting over now, and so am I. I would like – I would very much prefer – to start over together."

"You're making a mistake. You think you know me, but you don't." She knew more than anyone ever had, but it was what he thought, what he felt, not what he was. Not how he lived.

"Did I know Hogwarts before I went there? Did I know befriending Harry and Ron meant spending the next seven years fighting a Dark Lord? Being left grieving? Of course I didn't. We never know what our choices will bring us. That doesn't mean we can't make any."

"You have no regrets?" He pulled the dorsal fin away from the tail end outwards, and vanished bones and fin and head all together, then sluiced the fish under the tap.

"Some. But not about being who I am or loving whom I do. Love is its own reward." She put down the knife and turned towards him.

Love had never been other than a punishment to him, he thought. It had kept him alive when he would rather have died, kept him bound when he would rather have sunk into oblivion.

She was watching him as if she couldn't get enough of his face. It was absurd, but the colour came into his cheeks.

"I know that I want to know you," she said quietly. "If you can't want the same, I have at least the satisfaction of having told you, having tried. If loving Ron taught me anything, it was to reach for what I want with both hands. Not to wish in silence."

He bowed his head. He had wished in silence once, too. But that time was gone now.

She wasn't finished. "I'm going far enough back that I won't accidentally meet my other self or have to live through this war again. I can take you with me or leave you wherever you choose or give you the Time Turner to keep going, if you prefer. Think about it, Severus. That's all I ask."

"With," he said. "I'll try with."

* * *

With each passing day, he felt more comfortable with that decision. Three weeks later, when he did one last sweep of the room to make sure there was nothing left behind, he knew that his time in this place had been like re-entering Eden. They left the kitchen exactly as they had found it and, entwined as when they had arrived in it, stepped out into the future past, together.

THE END (of this arc, anyway)

* * *

**A/N Thanks to Whitehound for inspiring me to use Luna and to Lady Memory for "Love is its own reward".**

**"Lack of obedient Dementors" is AU. They were obeying Umbridge/Ministry people in DH, but we don't know whether or how quickly they switched sides again after the final battle. ****"Death Chamber" is not canon for the Veil room.**

**I discussed Time-Turners at the end of ch 7; they do not "change" the past, they merely move people _into_**** the past, where they can direct the course of events as they happen. Future-Hermione _knows_**** that Snape was rescued by an unidentified woman. She _knows_**** that Ron died. Those facts are unalterable, and only the first allows wiggle-room for a time-traveller to effect a rescue. **

**After snatching him, she time-jumped first to summer 1996, then Apparated. The Death Eater invasion had occurred over a month earlier, but in the confusion of Fudge's ousting, the Ministry still hadn't got around to warding the DoM against Apparition ;~P**

**Aguamenti Fervens is an AU version of the canon spell that conjures water. "Fervens" means hot, but the two together are ungrammatical. **

**The death toll figures are invented. Some Order members fit other categories.**

**The religious-sounding quotes are from the Apocrypha and Psalms(51:7). Chronologically, this scene is less than two days since his last letter, which had a slight liturgical flavour.**

**Canon doesn't specify which birds, flowers and insects were painted all over the Lovegoods' kitchen. I've chosen mainly native English flora and fauna. Anise hyssop is not native, but flourishes in the UK; it is popular for companion planting, butterfly gardens and herbals. **

**I've left open whether Snape had ever noticed that Dumbledore's wand was the Deathstick. He must have seen it, but I'm not convinced the Deathstick concept ever caught his fancy to the point of searching for clues to its existence or whereabouts. **

**The method of gutting a fish came from "Back in the Day: 101 Things Everyone Used to Know How to Do".**


	10. The Graveyard of Everything

THE GRAVEYARD OF EVERYTHING

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein. **

**A/N: This chapter follows on from the second-last letter in ch 7 to begin a two-chapter DH-compatible ending. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Cecelle and Lady Memory. **

**The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape had eased his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters twenty years into the future to Hermione. Now, two months after receiving his last letter, it's her turn to speak.**

I let him die. That's the thought I can't let go of. Funny, because back then I found it so easy to justify: we thought he was the enemy, the traitor, the murderer. I was tired, distraught, preoccupied. There were more important things to do, a Horcrux to find, a _war _to fight! But now that thought won't let go of me. I let him die. I let Severus die.

I shouldn't even think of him as Severus. I have no right, I who watched him drop lifelessly to the floor in that awful Shack, not once but twice in my life, without pity or feeling. Without lifting a finger to help, or even to check whether he was alive. Oh, I was right when I told Harry in first year that there are more important things than books and cleverness. "Friendship and bravery," I said then, meaning loyalty and courage and determination. In a word, heart. Harry has it. Dumbledore, I thought – wrongly; how wrong I was! – had it. Neville, whom I used secretly to despise and helped all the more for that, has always had it. And Severus had it in full measure, heart and strength and brains and creativity – everything except wisdom. He loved too well to love wisely.

I remember when Harry told Ron and me what he'd seen in those memories. The battle was over and he talked all the way to the headmaster's office. (All the portraits cheered when we went in. But Severus wasn't there. There wasn't even an empty frame.) How it pricked me to hear that Severus would not watch die anyone he could save. Not as much as it should have, but it did. It pricked, punctured my self-esteem, for as long as it took me to convince myself that it wasn't the same, that he had great wrongs to atone for, that, anyway, he was twenty years older and when he was my age he'd been a Death Eater. No saving people then! "Lately," he'd told Dumbledore; _lately_ he'd saved whenever he could. There was time for me. I was, at any rate, no worse than him. I could also grow into a fully human being.

I was wrong. You don't _grow_ into such things, you sculpt yourself, like clay, like stone, piece by laborious piece, adding, cutting away, shaping the unforgiving rock or squeezing the clay back into a ball and starting again. Either way, it has to begin with seeing clearly, with knowing you're wrong, unfinished, incomplete, and choosing to put yourself right. Not with excuses, justifications, defences, and denial.

And here I am, older now than he was then, and how do I measure up? How do I compare? With this Time-Turner in my hand, I have the means to save him. (Maybe – if it wasn't already too late when we left him there. How can I know? We didn't bother to check.) And do I dare? Do I sacrifice? Do I choose to return?

I can't. I have responsibilities, loved ones, anchors.

Not Ron. Our marriage has been in name only for years. I knew early on that I'd made a mistake, that the attraction I'd felt from the moment I first saw him (if I'm honest, and surely I can at last be honest with myself) should never have progressed to marriage. We could have been friends forever perhaps, unlike as we are, if we had only not taken that one step too far. If only I had realised that marrying him meant becoming my mother-in-law.

I never wanted to be Molly. I've never liked her as much as I told myself I should. Yes, she has seven children and she's fed and clothed and brought them up, and taught them enough of what's right that they all fought on the right side, even Percy in the end. Even the twins, whose moral sense was lacking in so many ways, but not in that one. But I could never quite forgive her for believing Skeeter against me in fourth year and showing it so pointedly with my Easter egg. And why did she have so many kids if her love had run out by the time she had Ron? (Oh, she fed him and clothed him all right, it was more subtle than that: sandwich fillings he didn't eat and clothes he was embarrassed to wear, like that dress-thing in fourth year. Maroon and mouldy lace, with his red hair! Could he _be_ more a figure of fun?) She wanted a girl, I think, and kept trying till she got one. And once she'd had all those boys she just had to lump them, didn't she?

I was luckier. I had my boy and girl set with just two. I could stop there, so I did.

And I can't leave them. I can't. It would be different if I could go and come back. I could wait until Hugo starts at Hogwarts, put him and Rose on the train, go into the past to find Severus and be back in plenty of time for the school holidays. (Bring him back with me, if he would come. If he was alive to come. Someone moved him after we left, but no one has ever admitted to doing it. Sometimes people say they've spotted him, or found his resting-place, but it always turns out not to be true.) But time travel only works one-way and I can't go forever and leave my kids. Not even for him.

(Or am I just saying that? He learnt courage as he got older. I learnt cowardice. I was much braver once. But I had nothing to lose. And he had nothing; nothing to lose, nothing to gain. Just his immortal soul perhaps. But maybe it was easier to be brave for that.)

Two months ago, I got his last letter. Almost a year ago, we saw Rosie and Al and James off on the train, and at the end of the day, I got his first as headmaster. And I couldn't breathe for sobbing.

I'd already quarrelled with Ron. After I called him a Muggle-hexing Malfoy-wannabe, and he'd stamped out the door, I knew it was over between us. Whatever respect I'd ever felt for him was long gone. He thought I couldn't hear what he told Harry at the station, but I did. His smugness has stopped being funny. He parrots his father's ideals, but he doesn't live them. (What could I expect? Arthur doesn't live them either. He thinks he does, but I'm a Muggle-born. I notice who treats my family as equal and who doesn't. Mostly who doesn't.) I didn't even feel sad about it, just numb, and glad that the kids weren't there to be woken by our screaming. I'd let Hugo sleep over at Harry's, knowing but not quite admitting to myself what was to come.

I wasn't particularly expecting a letter that night, not more than any other night, but Severus was writing quite frequently by then, and I knew one might come. I sat staring into the empty fireplace (because I didn't want visitors) and waited. And it did.

So short. So quiet. But his pain couldn't have sounded louder if he'd screamed it. We were waiting for the end by then, he in his deep cover as Voldemort's right-hand man, me in my cold, comfortable home, reading of Dumbledore's death and Charity Burbage's, of ambush and betrayal and the Ministry's fall and Lily's letter. Severus had not even hope left. (Not for himself.)

I had found Hogwarts a home and a harbour; he had found it the graveyard of everything. And worse was coming; we both knew that. Perhaps that's why his letters that year were more about my doings than his, until those last two frantic letters written within hours of each other: "I must find you before the Carrows do ... Think of me kindly sometimes." (I do, oh, I do. Always.)

And since then, there is only silence. There have always been gaps between his letters, most of them longer than the two months I've waited so far, but I knew those times he was still alive to write, whether he would or not. This time...

How I wish I could know that he had lived past that night. That whoever moved him (the Malfoys, perhaps; they owed him so much and had professed friendship so often) had found him still breathing, or somehow revived him and healed him and hidden him away in a place of refuge to start a new life, better than the old one. (It could hardly be worse.) Then I could dream of one day finding him and greeting him (with a hug – would he let me hug him?) and turning "do you remember"s into the friendship I think he was beginning to feel for me.

Or that I could imagine he'd saved himself, prepared a way out, "put a stopper in death" like he told us that first Potions lesson, and made a new identity for himself. Then surely, probably, he would have continued to write to me; I could look forward to more letters to come and maybe he'd even let slip or say openly where I could find him. (I wish I could find him.)

But I know from his letters that he didn't. He had no thought of such a thing. Besides, they were spelled not to arrive if he should still "exist in my time". If he had lived long enough, even the first letter would not have arrived.

I was so surprised to receive it, I remember. Surprised and honoured and heartsore and eager all at once. (He thought I could not remember him with fondness. He was wrong.) I read it in secret again and again, crying and smiling and letting myself pretend for precious moments that he was alive. Ron would never have understood, of course, even if we'd still been sharing our thoughts then. And Harry would have told Ginny, and she'd have thought it was creepy. A letter from beyond the grave, from someone she hated anyway. Harry might have forgiven him for the way he treated him, but she never would, nor for the things that happened that last horrible year when he was headmaster. Weasleys are not forgivers.

I could have told Luna. She'd have understood, even shared some of my feelings. (Not the regret. She is always too little dissatisfied to feel regret; he was right about that. And she had nothing to regret anyway. _She_ didn't watch him die and do nothing.) Somehow I never have. The opportunity never arises. Perhaps I am careful that it doesn't. This is _my_ secret. Mine and his. The only thing we've ever shared, just the two of us. (There is no two of us. I wish there could be.)

I didn't really expect to get a second letter, but I hoped. And sure enough, in the waning days of the year, I did. He was castigating me for having turned myself half into a cat. I suppose it was then that I really began to know him.

I remember how terrified I was that awful day he came to me in the infirmary. He was so angry, and I knew I deserved it. I'd stolen from him, I'd brewed a potion in a bathroom, where anyone might take it, I'd made the boys throw fireworks in his classroom and drug two classmates – any one of which activities might have got me expelled in a Muggle school – and I was lying to him. He knew all that. It's all in his letter. And yet, under the anger was compassion, understanding for my fear, hope for my future and a deep, deep desire to protect. I would never have known that if he hadn't written. Dumbledore was right about one thing at least; Severus did always hide the best of himself. And there was a lot of best to hide. With every letter I saw that more clearly.

There was a year between the fourth letter and the fifth. By the time it arrived, I'd given up hoping. Meanwhile, my marriage was continuing its long, slow crumble. Ron worked late and I worked early. Half the time, I was asleep when he came home to reheat dinner for himself and fall into bed. The other half, I pretended to be. Then the Shrieking Shack debacle happened, and he wrote, ranting, scolding, saying he would never write again. I couldn't blame him. I remembered too well.

I had thought all those years ago that he was almost insane in his fury. I'd believed him petty and silly to condemn Sirius on the strength of, yes, a dangerous and brainless prank, but certainly not the murder attempt he claimed it was. Sirius wouldn't turn one of his closest friends into a killer and fugitive just to stop a nosey parker, and to suspect Lupin of being involved had to be madness. (Now, I'm not so sure. Some of what Harry saw in Snape's memories gives me the strangest suspicions that I don't like to think about. What's the point of wondering, anyway? There's no one left to ask.) Of course, by the time I got that letter, I'd known for years that there was reason behind the fury. That he blamed Sirius (and himself) for Lily's death; that he believed Sirius was trying to kill the boy he'd sworn to protect. But still, it was different hearing it directly from him.

There's so much of that night I'd give anything to take back – hexing Severus unconscious, letting Ron chain himself to a werewolf, Wormtail's escape, but, most of all, that it never occurred to me to care how Severus fared. I hate my younger self for that. Fourteen was _not_ too young to know better. I hate that I never asked his forgiveness. Three more years went by under the same roof, and it never even occurred to me to apologise. I'd give anything to get back those forgotten chances and tell him I'm sorry. Tell him I'm grateful. Tell him I finally understand how much better he deserved. Yes, I'd give anything ... except my children. I can't leave them, how could I?

Another year went by before he wrote again. I was sure he never would. He'd said he wouldn't, and he wasn't the sort to say what he didn't mean. It would take a cataclysm to shift him.

It did. Voldemort returned. I couldn't even be glad Severus had changed his mind. All I could think was how desperate he must be. How desolate. How alone. How Cedric had been another death he couldn't prevent, and how he must have dreaded all the other victims he knew he wouldn't be able to save.

But he had forgiven me. I should be comforted by that, but I can't be. Or maybe I won't let myself be. I just feel I needed to _earn_ his forgiveness, not receive it as a free gift, for no reason other than that he had no one else. It's not personal enough, somehow. He might have forgiven any chance person he'd chosen as his confidant, forgiven out of necessity rather than conviction. I tell myself I should be honoured he chose me at all.

I wonder why he did. (Even he didn't know that. He suggested various reasons, but they weren't very convincing. I like to think he saw something kindred in me, that he saw more in my eleven-year-old self than the "hair, teeth and wildly waving hand" he disdained, but that's not convincing either. Why should he?) Was it just because I was Harry's friend, as close to Lily as he could get – as close as he dared go?

All that next year, his letters made me smile. The war hadn't begun yet, Voldemort was still playing possum, and Severus was grumbly about my "earnest, reproachful eyes", my "aggravating" habit of doing Harry's work for him, my "glorious mayhem" and my "smug expression". He'd begun to compliment me - backhanded compliments, usually, but definitely compliments. When he told me I'd have been "more loyal" – more loyal than _Lily_, the love of his life – I could almost forget that Ron accused me constantly of undermining him.

(I suppose I did. Less by what I said, usually, than by what I thought, by the automatic assumptions I made. "Always the tone of surprise", he told me once, about what I don't remember. Oh, that he'd Stunned a Death Eater on a broom the night they chased us. And I said it back to him not long after. Any undermining between us was mutual.)

But loyal or not, vindicated or otherwise, Severus still thought of me as a child. He wrote to me as the child he watched rather than the adult he anticipated.

Then we ended the phony war by going to the Ministry, and Dumbledore managed to curse himself, and everything changed. Severus was sadder, grimmer, more despairing ... and he no longer called me child. I'm ashamed to admit how largely that figured in my reading of his letters. If I lived to be two hundred, I wouldn't reach his age, I think. Not his chronological age, but his mental age, bowed down by years of misery and striving and self-transformation. He was amazing.

Somehow, he began to turn from unreachable dreams of Lily to curiosity about me, the adult-me who was/is his reader. No less unreachable, and yet he turned – more and more, he turned. I wish I could have read his letters _then,_when we occupied the same time-space, when I could have done something with the knowledge other than grieve.

Too late. (And would I have had wit to appreciate them? Or would I have thought, oh, how creepy, Snape's crushing on a future-me, how pathetic?)

Two months ago, I received his last letter. Eight weeks ago, I bought a Pensieve. I have stayed up every night since, long after Hugo's bedtime, watching Severus. Watching the pivotal and trivial moments that made up our acquaintance. In the classroom, on the Quidditch pitch, in the Shrieking Shack with Sirius and Lupin, and conjuring us stretchers after he came to. In the corridors and the Hospital Wing, the Great Hall and Grimmauld Place. The swish of a cloak, the twitch of a lip, the flick of his wand to the board. And every night, there is one memory I dare not pull, one memory I flinch away from.

I did not see Voldemort set the snake on him. There was only enough space for one head to peek through the gap, one pair of eyes to witness their meeting. Harry took it and Ron and I waited behind, not daring to speak. I did not see and I could not fully hear. I remember a mumble of voices, occasionally rising into intelligibility.

"I do not think you can make much difference now ... I have told you, no! ... Can't you?"

"My lord – let me go to the boy ... My lord!" Then a hush, a shout, a hiss and a terrible scream.

Voldemort left, Harry levitated the crate out of the way to climb in, and there was Snape kneeling, falling, blood pouring from his neck and his fingers pressing, pressing vainly, unable to stop it. Clutching Harry, memories pouring out with his last dying strength. I conjured a flask, and he whispered something and his hand fell. We stared for a moment, and Voldemort's voice echoed around the room and we left. I left first. Little as I had seen, it was enough, I thought.

What would I see in my Pensieve now, if I watched till the last edges of my presence? Would I see a hint of who came, who moved him? Would I see a flicker of movement, belying his apparent death? Or would I see nothing, just a corpse and a room and a pool of blood?

**A/N Quotes are mostly from earlier chapters of this fic, but "friendship and bravery" and "put a stopper in death" are from PS and "Lately", "tone of surprise" and the scraps of death scene conversation from DH.**

**The hospital interview with a cat-eared Hermione comes from ch 2 and the one-way operation of Time-Turners is mentioned in ch 8 of this fic. Both are neither supported nor denied by canon. I base my belief that Hermione missed hearing most of Snape's last conversation on the fact that in the text it starts mid-sentence when Harry puts his head to the gap to watch. Before that, all he heard was "voices".**

**For those who have struggled with my concept of time travel, try imagining yourself standing outside time and seeing past, present and future all in the one glance, like a napped cloth spread out on a table. The cloth can be folded, allowing a being to move from present to past (but not vice versa, because it's against the nap), but the effect is not to *change* something that's happened, but to *place* the mover in the correct time to do what was/is/will be done there. The pattern of events is already woven in the cloth.**


	11. All of History

ALL OF HISTORY

**Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.**

**A/N: This chapter follows on from the second-last letter in ch 7 as the second part of a two-chapter DH (and epilogue)-compatible ending. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste, Cecelle and Lady Memory, and to Whitehound my brainstormer, who inspired the turn this chapter takes. I apologise for the wait: a combination of real life and rewriting. **

**The story till now: Since Harry's first year, Snape had eased his troubled mind by sending time-spelled letters twenty years into the future to Hermione. Twenty years after the Battle of Hogwarts, she thought she'd received them all, and despaired. But there was still one letter to come...**

Dear Hermione,

It has been fifteen years for me since we last met, but I do not need the familiar weight of your Time-Turner against my chest to remind me. Doubt has held me silent until now, but here I am, at last, ready to tell you.

I hope you're there to read it. Your rashness still terrifies me. You might as well have thrown yourself headlong off a cliff as travel back thirty-two years to save me, with no certain way of returning home after. But has there ever been a cliff you wouldn't jump off to save a friend? I wanted to shake you when you told me, insanely matter-of-fact, "All I need to get home is something to halt my aging, somewhere to wait through the years, and someone to revive me at the end."

(I'm still not convinced that Petrifying yourself with a Basilisk memory in a Pensieve was safer than Transfiguration. You were afraid you'd lose yourself, that you wouldn't be the same person after losing and regaining your humanity, but I don't see why. You saw Draco Transfigured and Untransfigured once, and he did not seem changed by the experience.)

What could I do? You'd already come back for me; I couldn't stop you returning for your children, and I was too raw, too scarred, to accept your invitation to go with you; I could not be a man for you until I could be a man for myself.

Surely Iwasn't worth your bother. What pitch of desperation led you on, not knowing even if I _could_ be revived? How did you sustain the mad desire for twelve years, while you waited for your children to grow and become independent? You only shook your head when I asked you.

"Life is risk, Severus," you told me, and I still recall the exasperated lift of your eyebrow as you said it. Sometimes I think you haven't changed at all from the know-it-all child whose antics I fretted over for seven years. Other times I've wondered if there was any of her left in the grave silent woman you became, torn with regret for having watched me die.

There's nothing to regret, Hermione. _Let it go. _For my sake, if not for yours. I spent too many years bound to a treadmill of guilt and self-loathing to wish the same on anyone, least of all you. Especially for such foolishness.

The _only_ thing I wanted from you then, the _only_ trust you had to fulfil, was to stay with Lily's boy for as long as he let you. Could you not tell from my dying conduct that he was everything? (And, no, that wasn't a reason to waste time that was his on saving my wretched life. I was hardly the only person on your side who died that night. Why turn for me, when you had not for them?)

You have been back in your time (I hope) for three weeks, and our discussions must still be fresh in your mind. For what it's worth, they're still fresh in mine, and I find myself more eager to revisit the familiar than to relate the new. I have not played Do-you-remember since I was about sixteen, with that other friend, when memory and habit were the only bonds left to tether her.

(The worst pang of losing her was realising it had happened already; she was his. And then he dared tell me I was "lucky" she was there. _Lucky!? _The insult was out before I could stop myself, and I saw, when I tried to apologise, that she was not saddened, but freed. And I was voiceless.)

There was no one after that, not even Dumbledore: my confessor, but never my confidant. I walled away my past behind strong shields of Occlumency and set my back to the wheel. I never expected to be anything but alone. Even death, I thought, would not change that. But it did.

I remember dying. Peace. Completion. My task was done and I with it. I closed my eyes on green, shielded by glass, and woke to soft brown: your eyes and your tumbling hair, shorter, but still rebelliously wild. You were grey with weariness from nursing me; you looked like your own grandmother, I thought hazily.

In between, there had been pain — crushing, choking, overmastering — of breath forced into my lungs and the cramp of it in my gut, of my heart flittering and jerking about like a landed fish, and the sizzle of returning twitch to my fingers and feet. (And the rubbed raw burn and itch in places mentionable and unmentionable. By the time I realised how much of me you must have seen, I couldn't bring myself to care. What did skin matter when you had seen my soul?) But there was no smell of blood any more, only dizziness and soft blankets and the remembered throb of a ripped-out neck.

And you.

I don't think I'd ever felt languid before. It was quite a pleasant feeling and I couldn't work up any self-reproach at not fighting it. I shouldn't have felt safe with the best friend of the boy I'd sent to his death, but I did, and the thought occurred how differently my life would have gone if it had been you in the playground when I was nine. (One thing, at least, would have improved immediately: no spiteful Petunia dogging our footsteps, the first in a long line of naysayers. Perhaps the only surprise is that Lily resisted them so long.)

My first waking was over almost before it had begun. I slept and woke and slept and woke, and always you were there, sponging my face, chafing my limbs, pouring noxious brews down my throat. (You used too much Doxy Venom in the Nerve Restorer. _Two _drops, not three, or the drinker's toenails may turn green.) I asked how many years I'd been asleep. It was not years, you said, but days, and we had won. Then I wondered if you'd been hit with an aging curse and why you were wasting time on my care instead of your own.

"I've come back from the future to see you right," you said. "It didn't seem fair for you to die just when you could finally live. I'm sorry if you didn't want that. I was never quite sure from your letters if you did or not."

I had not been sure either.

I still wasn't. The war was over. My life was – not over. The boy. The boy was dead. What was there left to fill up the hours till my next death? (My final death, I hoped.) And then you told me the boy was not dead, after all.

I remember. How could I forget? You told me his life had been tethered to Voldemort's with the taking of his blood, and that he would live through anything, even a killing curse, unless he chose to let go. But when did that boy ever choose to let things go? I could not think then of how luck and determination had carried him through, nor be grateful for the qualities that had so often infuriated me. I could not think any thought but one: Dumbledore had _known _the boy would survive, known and kept it from me.

"He _couldn't _tell you," you pleaded. "It was a bigger secret even than Harry being a Horcrux. We could still have found a way around that, maybe Polyjuice or something. But if Voldemort knew Harry would keep coming back to life every time he killed him, he would simply have destroyed the body so there was nothing to come back _to_."

(I can say it now without shuddering. Voldemort. What a fool he was, after all. To trust the task of checking the boy's death to an underling whose loyalty he'd destroyed himself.)

Even now my chest aches, remembering Dumbledore's reply when I taxed him with having raised the boy like a pig for slaughter. He did not even try to offer comfort or excuse, but brazened it out, completely impenitent.

"This is touching," he said. "Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?"

I cast my Patronus, knowing he would misunderstand – _glorying_ in being misunderstood, as I had learned to do in the days I styled myself the Half-Blood Prince.

(When there is no likelihood, not even a possibility, of being comprehended, one learns to glory in one's solitude – or at least to pretend convincingly. "Pining for the impossible," I thought then. But you do not let the impossible stop you, Hermione, and I have learned to view the word with scepticism. Once I'd have said hearts could not find each other across time. I know better now.)

He thought my Patronus meant eternal love, and I chose to let him, but it was not love, only faithfulness to my promise. I was her stand-in, protecting her son in her place; how could my Patronus do other than show it?

I've wondered often if she shaped her own life after her favourite movie, a silly story about a doe with one fawn, and hunters in the forest. (She even had the record, full of even sillier songs about April showers and sorrow making hearts sing. It never did mine.) Did she remember that when she stood between her child and death, and refused to move aside? How often I've wondered what went through her head in those last moments.

In those days, my only comfort had come from knowing I was repairing – clumsily, incompletely, with large gaping stitches that didn't conceal the rip – the damage I had done her. (Them.) And Dumbledore had taken that from me, taken it too late for me to change my course. But my promise remained. I lived for her, and I died for her, and I told you, when we talked of her, that I was done; we were quits.

And it was the truth. What more can I owe her after that?

She was my first, my only friend, but I have clearer vision now. I know what friendship is, how long-suffering, how ready to excuse. I have seen it in you. (Do not deny it, and do not blame yourself, as I know you do, for your differences with Weasley that grew too large to mend. How many times in your schooldays I saw him hurt you and slight you, not valuing what he had, and you forgave and forgave and forgave. It takes two to build a bridge across a broken friendship, or a broken marriage; there must be sound footing on both sides for it to stand.)

I treasure those twelve days precious days you nursed me, though they were full of anguish. You had the answers to every question I had about the war and Dumbledore's machinations, the boy's part in it, even my own, and they were not pleasant hearing, soften them as you could.

Worse, everyone knew – how I had been Dumbledore's puppet and why, the strings he pulled to set me dancing. To set me killing, in his name. (There was even a book, you admitted, _Snape: Scoundrel or Saint? _Scoundrel or Saint? Dupe or doormat would be more to the point. Liar and laughingstock. Mug and murderer.)

You should have hated me, Hermione. I sent your friend to his death, _believing _it to be permanent. I am as guilty as if it had been.

You demurred when I said that, blamed it all on Dumbledore, reminded me the boy would not have listened anyway. But whether he listened or not, I should have _tried_. He deserved a choice, a real choice, and time to think it through. Not to be moulded into a kamikaze before he knew his right from his left. Before he knew his rights from his left-overs.

(Would Lily have kept silent? Then how dared I?)

The greater good for the greatest number: what is it worth when it comes at the price of betraying a child? The toad under the harrow thinks differently than the farmer. It is a bitter thing to be that toad. But it is bitterer yet to be both toad and farmer (and harrow!) in one. As I was. As Dumbledore had made me.

Perhaps I was the coward some have called me, but I could not endure to stand before those who had known me or known of me, conscious of _all _they knew of me. Let them hate me as they may; I had solaced myself with the knowledge that they saw not me, but only my cloak. The boy meant well, you assured me. Nevertheless, he had stripped me naked and I could not stand amongst the clothed. Not then.

The present was unbearable, unless I lived in a cave; the future you were returning to even more so. So I accepted your Time Turner instead and made my first jump. With all of history and geography spread out before me, I chose to jump to 1945 and travel to Germany. For the better part of two years, I helped mop up after Grindelwald's war, as I could not have done after Voldemort's. (Not even inner trembling at that name, now, so free have I become. But not so free that I can say it without caring. I shall never be quite that free.)

I needed to see the aftermath of war. I needed to close that door on my life, to help instead of hurt, to sow instead of scythe. You had told me I had helped build the future, and that the fruits of my labour contained more of sweet than bitter. Forgive me if I could not believe it till I had watched for myself how burnt earth blooms again.

It was good to be unknown, to be helping people who did not first pause to wonder if they should spit in my face or refuse what had touched my tainted hands. (I did not even know how painfully I had walked in shame till I had none left who chose to shame me. Had it always been them, even before it was me?)

People were grateful. Some even smiled at me, and slowly I learned to smile back. (I hope that pleases you. You said I did not smile enough, and I read in your eyes that you meant "at all".) But I could not stay in that time, even on the continent. It was too close in every way, and Dumbledore's name fell too often in my ear. He was famous and beloved, and I still too rubbed by his betrayal.

So I journeyed further back and further, jumping thirty or fifty years at a time to wherever my fancy took me. I have participated in many of the discoveries of past ages under assumed names: brewed potions at different phases of the moon with Hesper Starkey, love potions with Laverne de Montmorency and Pepperup with Glover Hipworth, studied alchemy with Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, and metallurgic transmutation with Nicholas Flamel.

Nowhere have I found a home or any replacement for those I had left behind. I have encountered kindness, hospitality, acceptance – all new to me, all welcomed – but not commonality. The further from you I journey, the more I know you are where I want to be. You are what comes to mind when I hear the word home.

So, as I said, here I am. Ready to see again Narcissa, Draco and Lucius, even if they hate me for betraying them. To see the boy (the man) I once wound my life around, that I parented for six horrendous years without us ever growing warmer towards each other. Perhaps we can at least acknowledge now that we were allies. To see the world I helped create, even if no one welcomes me but you. You are all the welcome I need.

You have guessed it, haven't you? (It was your idea, after all, that I could not trigger my first letter's condition that "I no longer exist in your time", if there was no "I" while I was in transit to "exist".) Did you guess from the start and skip ahead to here? Return at once, if you please. Nicholas promises me to spell this so that no one can read it but you, and you must read the whole screed aloud to reverse me. You and no other. You or no one. I like that thought, that I regain myself at the sound of my words in your voice. My name on your lips.

It seems fitting to come as a time-spelled letter. Thus I captured your heart, so you told me, and thus I give mine into your care. Transfigure me back now, if you wish me there. Or leave me as I am until the end of time. I shall not know; I shall not suffer.

Yours ever,  
Severus Snape

THE END

**A/N Since I'd made a point of Time-Turners going backwards only, I had to provide at least one plausible alternate method for Hermione (and Snape) to reach the future. They don't actually ****jump through time, they just wait in stasis for the chosen time to arrive.**

**One difficulty was that, unlike fanon, canon seems to have no stasis or age-halting spells or potions. Snape describes the Draught of Living Death as a "sleeping potion". Dumbledore's spell of enchanted sleep in the Triwizards Second Task doesn't remove the subject's need to breathe. Petrificus Totalus immobilises the body, but not the mind. However, those who were Petrified by the Basilisk in CoS appear to be without awareness and stiff as stone, so, though we're not explicitly told, I've chosen to interpret that as stasis.**

**As time-spelling (like Lily's love of **_**Bambi**_ **and "too much Doxy Venom" turning toenails green) is my own invention – and also a pre-existing condition of the story – I had more latitude there. I decided it works by folding small and light inanimate objects, such as letters, outside of time, winking them out and in again**.

**According to Dumbledore's notes to Babbity Rabbity in **_**Beedle the Bard, **_**Transfiguring oneself into an animal removes human consciousness. (**"**Transfiguring oneself into an animal ... one would become the animal entirely, with the consequence that one would know no magic, be unaware that one had ever been a wizard, and would need somebody else to Transfigure one back to one's original form."**_**)**_** I see no reason why Transfiguration by another and/or into an object would be any different, ****Slughorn's armchair trick notwithstanding. (In fact, that may have been a glamour of some kind rather than a Transfiguration; canon doesn't specify whether he became an armchair or only seemed to be one.) **

**We do see Draco Transfigured into a ferret and back without Minerva getting hysterical, so it seems that wizards believe this does not constitute any risk of annihilation, but I've taken the liberty of having Hermione be more sceptical of received wisdom than she was in canon. After all, she had to grow up sometime ;~P **

**I've used a couple of DH quotes and a paraphrase (Dumbledore's comment in DH, ch 35, "He tethered you to life while he lives!"), and one word from SWM, OotP from James's admonition, "You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus..."**

**The historical figures are from HPL Timeline and list of Famous Wizard Cards.**


End file.
